Boost: straight, clean boost.

Recovery: Nice, orderly recovery. Drifted about 1/2 mile down-range

This is a 'kiddie's rocket' for sure, but it never ceases to yield, clean, consistent flights. I originally got this rocket cause I thought it looked cool, and quite honestly, I thought it was a lot smaller than it turned out to be. It is based on a BT-50 body tube, which comes pre-painted yellow, and with the 'eraser' wrap already installed. The nose cone is made from yellow plastic, and had the pencil point silk screened onto it. Everything you need comes in the kit, and it will handle any 18mm motor you can throw at it. THe kit's assembly is cake, with only one tube coupler to make sure that you have straight. As is Estes Style, the shock cord is about 1/4 the length it should be, so on it's first flight, it got dinged by the nose cone after ejection. It comes with a 10" plastic parachute that is sufficient.

It uses a plastic fin-can, which attaches nicely with a liberal amount of modeling cement. Be careful not to get the cement on the painted portions of the body tubes though, because it eats through the paint in a hurry. All told, assembly took maybe an hour, and all of the glue was dry and cured an hour after that. I used the Elmer's wood glue because it is slightly thicker, and seems to spread a bit better than elmer's glue wihtout all that moisture wrinkle. This rocket has been in my arsenal for several years, and has brought me nothing but consistent flights from the first time I flew it. If, however, you intend to use Aerotech 18mm reloads, there are some modifications you should make.

Construction is pretty straightforward on this rocket. The instructions are simple, and like I said, I built it in about an hour, including watching the glue dry.

There are two things I would do differently in this kit from what the instructions say to do: The first, had I known they exist, is to file the top of the motor retainer clip down enough to be able to accept the 18mm Aerotech motors with their ejection cap in place without binding. I have really been wanting to put this up on a D24T for quite a while, but I haven't been able to get into the motor mount tube with anything long enough to file that clip down, so it doesn't clear the ejection plug on the reloads.

Second, take a trip to your local fabric store, and find some decent quality elastic cord, or go one step further, and buy some kevlar yarn from a rocket store online, and replace the stock Estes Shock cord. The reason I say this is not because it is of bad quality, but rather because it is far too short. Estes has always provided less than what is necessary much less desired when it comes to chock cords. I once received a 'Big Bertha' kit with 12" of shock cord. The rule of thumb is typically 4 to 5 times the length of your rocket of static shock cord (the kevlar yarn) and you could maybe get away with 2 to 3 times the length of your rocket with elastic cord. It really seems like a lot on the ground, but once you see what happens when it's too short, you will understand all of this. The Big Berth, by the way is 24" long. See the problem?

Other than those two points, this is an excellent kit, and it is easy enough to build, and it yields nothing but excellent flights in nearly any kind of weather.