Rocket Kit Review

Public Enemy Nike Ajax

This kit stinks. It's not scale enough, and the booster bottom has only one motor, and not even a correct tail cone assembly. While perhaps dramatic looking after being finished, the rocket is unstable and will not fly. At first I thought it was me--but I have flown it three times, and each flight was a more spectacular failure than the last. The first flight was at LDRS 17 in 1998 in the Bonneville Salt Flats on an I132-10, which got the thing off the pad but kicked the transition section off the rocket prematurely. Later that same weekend, I tried flying it on an H45. The same problem occurred, and the bottom section got lost in the salt mud. The third time I tried to fly it, on July 30, 2000, on an H125, the rocket was totally unstable--scary and embarassing as it shot up about fifty feet in the air and started "patrolling" clockwise. I feel that Public Enemy, who of course started out small, may have added too many new kits too quickly. The Nike kit was about 120 bucks, and I expect more for that money--at least a stable rocket.