Proteus maiden flight

Finally managed to put this puppy up. Loaded up the L1120 (easy build), armed both the Co-Pilot and the PerfectFlite, had Charlie Loveday (TAP guy) look everything over for my Level Three preview, packed in the loooong (80 feet!) climbing rope main harness and the monster SkyAngle chute, slid in the shear pins, and hauled the 54.8 lb. beauty out to the away pad. With help I slid it onto the rail, stood it up, and inserted the triplefold igniter. Turn the altimeter arming keys, have a picture taken, walk nervously away. I've had bad things happen with big rockets and dual deployment at this field, so my apprehension was all the more acute. Notify the LCO, hear the countdown, and 1/2 second after the "one" was called out, FAST ignition and off she goes. I had coated the top inch of the top grain with pyrogen and this sure seemed to do the trick; no sputtering on the pad, slowly building up pressure. A nice, long boost, then a nice, long coast; arc over the top, and sure enough, separation and drogue! 400 feet above the deck, I was greatly relieved to see the nosecone pop off and the pilot chute pull out the main. The booster fell sickeningly, seemingly a victim of separation, only to finally pull up at the end of that looong main harness. Was probably under full chute and harness for two hundred feet. The electronics peeped out 4243 feet; I left them singing thier happy songs in the back of the van for the whole ride home, a testament to a great flight.

Sadly, all my pics seem to be too big to post; they keep getting rejected. They're all in JPEG format; any suggestions?

If you have an image editing program, you can resize them. 800x600 is a good handy size.

You could try using a paint program to compress the jpg's down a bit. Or resize them which will bring the file size down also.

If you do a lot of photo work on the web, I recommend Hemera's NetGraphics Optimizer (about $35).

Depending on the image, you can knock 30%-80% of the size out of the picture without changing its physical size. I've attached an example to this, and the next reply.

This image (Carl's 38-Special Deuce's Wild! at NSL) i've resized (360 X 480) to make is small enough to work as an attachement. (The original is 1200 X 1600 and 640KB in size)

This image is 90KB

This is the same image after running it through NetGraphics Optimizer.

Still 360 X 480, but only 19KB in size. The naked eye could *barely* pick out the slight differences in this picture. If you were to save both and blow them up on your screen you would see that THIS picture is MUCH lower quality, but as a web picture, it doesn't matter.

They both look the same on the screen, yet one is 5 times bigger than the other.

Great tool. i love it and well worth the $35 bucks!

jim

OOHHH I missed the flight. I was down on Cape Cod and was just getting back on saturday
well I hope you plan to fly it agian sometime soon so I can come and see it.

I can vouch for the flight of the Proteus, awesome!. The motor is one of the most impressive white lightening available. I wish I had the money to fly these.

Attach is a liftoff shot of the Proteus.

-Rob Bazinet

Rob, thanks for the posted picture; the one I have is nearly identical. As for those who didn't get a chance to see her fly, don't worry, after I cert Level Three at LDRS later this month I'll fly again at Frontier, this time with an M! Although that L1120 certainly was a pretty sight at that funky field...

I'm sure looking forward to flying this rocket in Kansas; I don't yet know what motor I'll be able to scrounge up, so I'll have to post the results upon my return. I'm leery of any of the really big loads as an N2000 sims out to 16000 feet and I'd really like to see the whole event.

Great Pics , Great Lift off, Great rocket
well done , i hope all goes well for L3 Cert , so do you plan on certing on a N2000? or somthing smaller?


matt

I am kicking myself for missing that one. good luck on your L3. Bring back another M for Frontier!!!!