rocketmanMV
Active Member
- Joined
- Oct 17, 2002
- Messages
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This is a public reply to Murray Lampert, inquiring as to my experience with Hawk Mountain's Proteus kit. Be prepared to have patience with Alan as he doesn't sell many of these rockets and seems to make them up as they are ordered. It took a total of five weeks to receive all the parts. Having said that, this rocket rocks. Well thought out, tough as nails, good documentation, excellent personal support from Alan. He does almost too much in preparing this kit; I would have liked to do more of the fabricating myself. I built and painted it in seven days. My Proteus has flown on the following reloads: L1120, M1315, M1419, M2400, M1939. All flights were successful EXCEPT the M2400; seems that I overlooked the Mach delay switch on the altimeters; the apogee drogue charges fired at 2000 feet, severing the two 4000 pound kevlar straps and tearing out the electronics bulkhead and bay. The drogue chute was in tatters, the whole three part mess came in with a thud. The ONLY damage was one slightly fractured fin fillet and light shattering of the nose cone shoulder. Like I said, tough as nails. The biggest bruising was to my ego as this was at LDRS this year, being filmed by both the Discovery Channel and Extreme Rocketry. You can check out the action on the this year's LDRS video. All the flights have been arrow straight, the M1939 went to 11,842 feet. The L1120 was a majestic, albiet slow flight to 4200 feet; I wouldn't fly it on anything smaller. At any rate, as a Level Three project, this rocket is well worth the (big) bucks, in my humble opinion.