Favorite type of launch to watch?

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neil_w

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Some rockets are known as crowd pleasers. What kind of rocket is your favorite to *watch*? This is a fairly open ended question so take it in whatever direction you'd like.

I think the single best launch I've seen was a Mars Lander. I don't know why exactly, but it was incredibly cool. I also enjoyed KenECoyote's Turbo Vortico quite a bit.

Unfortunately I haven't really seen too wide a variety in person yet, so there are undoubtedly lots of awesome things I haven't witnessed yet.
 
I like watching the Falcon 9 launch and land!

But with regard to hobby rockets, I like watching multi-staged rockets, from LPR up to HPR. There is something about the pause between stages that gives suspense.
 
Low and slow big rockets. As a kid, everyone always oohed and aahed over the Big Bertha, the biggest and slowest of the time.
Now it's 10 lb 4" rockets 8' tall on sparky motors that fly to 1000-2000 feet.
 
Sparkies and EX motors. The noise and thump to the chest feeling when they launch .
 
Anything with an O in it from an away cell. The sound, the feeling of the vibration in your chest, the fact that you see the motor light a full second before you hear the roar, and then watching it shrink and disappear in the sky. It's always nice when it comes down safely, too. :grin:
 
Lately, I've been hanging out...

At Target in front of the bathrooms...

Waiting for a well deserved launch...
 
Anything with an O in it from an away cell. The sound, the feeling of the vibration in your chest, the fact that you see the motor light a full second before you hear the roar, and then watching it shrink and disappear in the sky. It's always nice when it comes down safely, too. :grin:

I also enjoy the large motors but more so if they lift off slowly. At NYPOWER this past Sunday there was a large scale Nike Smoke that lifted off pretty slowly but remained pointing in the right direction, very little weather cocking if much at all. Combined with the deep roar, loads of white smoke, the slow liftoff was pretty cool to watch on such a big rocket.
 
I had meant to exclude your own rockets, but we'll go with it... please define "something neat".

Scaring the Bejesus out of a seagull, going cruise missile over a soccer match (with a return to launch field w/in 18' of the launch pad), having it's booster glide down in a beautiful arc are all things that come to mind. Mind you, these were not all on the same day, location, or with the same rocket.
 
So far I'm enjoying a few kinds, hard to say which one is my favorite.
Low and Slow
K-motor Skidmarks
Anything with a bright colored flame
Rockets with nerve-wracking arcing trajectories...
 
-Big launches off the away cells (M1939s are awesome)
-Multistage flights of just about any impulse class, although a fellow club member has a great 4" two stage that flies K to K for spectacular flights
-TCC's Nike Smoke K2045 drag races...
-High, fast flights of any type
-Small Vmax or WT in a big rocket, fast off the pad but able to see the whole flight
 
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My Radial Flyer on an M1101 was pretty awesome. That sucker was 2.5 miles in the sky within a few seconds!
 
TARC practice and qualifying flights.
This year I really enjoyed watching a number of these flights.
Something about seeing the very different design approaches of the teams to achieve the goal.
The very unpredictable outcomes of the flights, and knowing there are two fragile eggs in the cargo.
Then seeing some very successful flights that got one of our local teams into the finals.

2nd favorite - Very large, slow and low HPR birds on really big motors.
 
Sparkies and anything I can keep enough of a visual on to keep my camera pointed at it. So I'm not too keen on the ones that teleport off the pad or the ones that totally disappear before apogee, though my camera has a pretty good zoom and a dot sight so it doesn't have to be 'low and slow'. Clusters and multi-stage are certainly fun when they go well, and significantly more scary when they don't. :p
 
Sparkies and anything I can keep enough of a visual on to keep my camera pointed at it. So I'm not too keen on the ones that teleport off the pad or the ones that totally disappear before apogee, though my camera has a pretty good zoom and a dot sight so it doesn't have to be 'low and slow'. Clusters and multi-stage are certainly fun when they go well, and significantly more scary when they don't. :p

When I'm out to launch with the guys ( :) ) I'm a Blue Thunder addict. To the point of being among the first to burn I435's, destroying two rockets in the process. When the first came out they just drilled out the nozzles to the max...or more than the max. Both nozzles cracked giving vectored thrust causing the rockets to smash into the El Dorado dry lake bed. When they hit the street they made up some drilled out aft enclosures for the then new larger diameter nozzle. Somewhere I have an original un-anodized seal disk for the 38mm, too :)
 
Oddrocs, Clusters, Scale, Big Hybrids. But you never know when you will see something awesome. One time I saw an old Centuri Space 1999 Eagle launch, spin down and "crash" just like the opening sequence of the old television show. Really brought back a memory I was not expecting.

The most exciting is when there are doubts about a new, complex or unusual rocket. I once saw a soccer field fly. The rocket had not been accepted in the past and when it flew fine just watching the reaction of the "kid" who finally flew it was priceless.
 
Anything BIG .... except hybrids that putz on the pad for what seems like days and bringing the launch to it's knees while everyone waits.....
 
I've only been to one real big launch but my favorite was cheering on the cert flights.
 
Favorite: Any successful launch and recovery. This was "THE" Mars Lander that was pretty cool: [video=youtube;LXR0y4p5cB4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2FSzu5Hyas[/url] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXR...outube.com/watch?v=-LmbTicdmr4[/video] Kurt
 
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