We present results from fully nonlinear simulations of unequal mass binary black holes plunging from close separations well inside the innermost stable circular orbit with mass ratios q \equiv M _ { 1 } / M _ { 2 } = \ { 1 , 0.85 , 0.78 , 0.55 , 0.32 \ } , or equivalently , with reduced mass parameters \eta \equiv M _ { 1 } M _ { 2 } / ( M _ { 1 } + M _ { 2 } ) ^ { 2 } = \ { 0.25 , 0.248 , 0.246 , 0.229 , 0.183 \ } .
For each case , the initial binary orbital parameters are chosen from the Cook-Baumgarte equal-mass ISCO configuration .
We show waveforms of the dominant \ell = 2 , 3 modes and compute estimates of energy and angular momentum radiated .
For the plunges from the close separations considered , we measure kick velocities from gravitational radiation recoil in the range 25-82 km/s .
Due to the initial close separations our kick velocity estimates should be understood as a lower bound .
The close configurations considered are also likely to contain significant eccentricities influencing the recoil velocity .