The design for this rocket started out as another great performing design of mine: Rock010. Just prior to actually finding high powered rocketry, I made a cool 'Big Bertha' sized rocket with 5 fins, and 2 stages. It's downfall, as it turns out was stability, and low power construction techniques with mid-power motors.

So in an effort to build better, this design came up. It's still 5 fins, and two stages, but it was deigned to have a booster recovery system, which I had designed for an electronics device that was never built (though I'm certain it can be replaced by one or two commercially available units, I just haven't done it yet) to light the second stage. The booster would come down on a 10" estes parachute (rather than ballistically) and the sustainer would continue on to 4000'.

I still believe that the design is viable, just the paint job is not. I try to be a bit imaginative when I come up with a paint job, but this one happens to use too much imagination, and too little function. See, as I normally fly on dry lakes, a rocket color that couldn't closer be matched by Sherman Williams, PPG, or even Home Depot to the lake bed floor is typically a bad idea. I just thought, "It looks kind of like a match, I'll paint it like one, and call it 'Match This' and all will be well." Not so much, actually. I dare say I did a pretty good job of painting it, and I am completely satisfied with the effect, and the turn out of the concept, just not the fact that it exactly matches the lake bed.

I actually took this rocket out to the lake bed to launch with family a while back, and once I pulled all of my stuff out, and situated everything, and began prepping, I realized that I couldn't find one of my rockets. With a closer look, I did find it, but guess which one was 'missing'? You guessed it: "Match This'. I decided that unless I was more than willing to lose it, I shouldn't fly it, and I wasn't yet more than willing to lose it. I also decided at that time to not ever paint another rocket brown, and to not take on scale projects that could be run over by a car with the color brown. Unless it's the size of a volkswagon, it will easily be lost on nearly any lake bed.

Here we are, back at learning from someone else's mistakes.