A friend and I have been using our Monday lunch hour to fire off model rockets in a park near the office. Mostly one of two things happens when trying to photograph a launch. Either the rocket just sits on the pad and fails to fire so that I have six or eight photos of a rocket on the pad or I don't push the shutter quite in sync with the launch button and capture only a series of smoke trails. But now and then I do manage to get some shots that capture the experience. In the first of these, the rocket is ready to fire. In the second, we have ignition with both the launch wire and the cap that holds the wire in the engine being blown out. In the third, we are on our way. By the time the camera has fired a 4th time, all that is left is a smoke trail.

[bertwert]

Nice!
This is a challenging subject. I like the third one.

[SpecialK]

That looks like an Alpha III.

In 5th grade, some other rocket group started a brush fire in Mile Square park, which curtailed launches there for some time...

[cmeier]

Yes, I believe that is an Alpha III. We are are starting slow. We are limited in both time and space during lunch and neither of us have launched rockets in many years. I've recently found a company that sells a U.S. quarter sized mini version of the Arduino w/ stackable boards for USB, SD card, a combo 3-axis accelerometer, 3-axis gyro and 3-axis compass, and a barometer/altimeter. The goal is to build an instrument package, make a movie, and superimpose the graphs of the data on the movie. We'd like to add a camera to the package and get both the from-the-ground and from-the-rocket vantage points. But I haven't tried the movie capabilities of the K-30 yet, so we have a fun learning curve ahead.

https://www.tiny-circuits.com/

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Last edited by cmeier; 02-04-2016 at 01:28 PM.

[Unregistered User 8]

A very good series of photographs. Well taken.

[wtlwdwgn]

Good way to spend your lunch hour!

[Tom Gotzy]

That's the spirit!
I remember building and launching model rockets when I was younger...lots of fun!
Great shots at take-off... good timing!