I talked to Apogee about this over the weekend. They said they are getting almost nothing from Madcow anymore, so they had to discontinue the Level 2 rocket, among others. They said it was a good seller and, if Madcow ever starts producing again, they would add it back in to the lineup. I understand their position - it is hard to sell something if the supplier doesn't give you any to sell. I am not always a fan of Apogee for many reasons, but I have to give them credit for taking the Level 2 off their website when they know they can't provide one to the customer. There are other vendors who have taken orders even when they knew they would not be able to provide the product in a timely manner...
As others have noted, you can't go wrong with Wildman and Mach 1 fiberglass rockets.
That's good to know why their Level 2 kits are gone from their menu. I figured there were supply chain issues and that's why they downsized their available kits.
I ended up ordering two kits. First, I ordered one from Apogee... .their Katana kit. Apogee does have quite a good amount of centralized parts and instructional videos, but their shipping cost is crazy. Still, the Katana kit has the ebay built into the kit, and it'll give me that experience building it before I move onto other kits, sans instructions. I know there were a comment or two about kits without instructions. That wasn't a deal breaker for me, but when I'm moving onto something new, it's helpful to have that crutch to fall back on.
That being said, I'm going to modify that Katana kit out of the gate. First, I'm strongly considering wrapping the airframe with fiberglass, one of course to strengthen the kit, but two, so I don't have to worry about filling in the spirals! My level one build, which was a LOC Hi-tech, I ended up spending more time filling the spirals than building the rocket itself. The Katana is a 4" tube, and over 6 foot tall, so I'd likely be filling spirals into next season.
Second, I'm going to put a Featherweight GPS in the nose cone by cutting off the eyelet end of the nosecone and putting in a plywood bulkhead with a removable GPS sled that I can transfer to other rockets, as shown in
John Coker's video. I'd probably have room in the ebay of the rocket itself, but I'd like a quick way to move the GPS from one rocket to another, and also add weight to the nose cone if needed, which I can't with the existing Katana nose cone.
The second kit, which I'll probably end up doing my L2 cert on, is the LOC Doorknob 7.5". It's a heavier rocket, and I can launch to a lower altitude on a J motor than I would on the Katana. My summer launch site can't handle higher altitude launches, so unless I want to wait until November to go out to the winter site, the Doorknob is the better choice. I can also launch it strictly on ejection charge and JLCR, and I don't have to worry about dual deployment and altimeters. I'll probably glass that one as well, depending on how the Katana build goes.
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