Brief:
Very cool looking, two stage design. The upper stage can also be flown as a single stage rocket.

Construction:
There are a fair number of parts in this kit. Tubes included are two BT-60 for the airframe, two BT-50 side pods for the booster, two BT-20 for engine mount tubes, and two short lengths of BT-5, again for the booster. Also included are various couplers, adapter rings, centering rings, two die cut balsa sheets, a decal sheet, clay weight for the upper stage nose cone, and seven nose cones. All parts were of standard Estes usage and quality with one exception. The PNC-50KA nose cones (part number 71028) had a noticeable lengthwise offset between the two halves. This does detract somewhat from the look of the model.

The instructions follow a fairly logical order; building up various sub-assemblies and then assembling these into a finished unit. I used epoxy for most of the construction as I expected the booster would take quite a bit of abuse.

I did have one problem with the fin pod tubes. You are to glue a PNC-5A nose cone into each end of a short length of BT-5 body tubes, however, the BT-5 tubes were shorter than the length of the shoulders of the 2 nose cones butted together. I had to grind down the shoulder on one cone for each assembly to achieve the proper fit.

One thing I would change about assembly in retrospect, is to wait and install the booster tubes until the booster and booster tubes have been painted. This would make it easier to paint them a contrasting pattern.

Two things that I changed were substituting a 3/16" launch lug for the provided 1/8" lug and using a longer shock cord that what was provided.

Finishing:
I used my standard finishing method for this kit. I followed the box art fairly closely with respect to colors, etc. The decals were the standard stick on decals that Estes uses. The two large yellow "Renegade" decals that go on the booster were so thin that the yellow doesn't fully cover up the underlying black paint.

Construction Rating: 3 out of 5

Flight:
While building this kit, I became quite concerned about the weight of the booster and the prospect of flight damage. The booster has five fins, two booster tubes with nose cones, and two fin pods with two nose cones each in addition to the main BT-60 body tube. That is quite a bit of mass to fall from the sky. As it turns out, my fears were well founded.

The instructions call for you to tape the two motors end-to-end and then friction fit the motors into the model. I found this to be somewhat cumbersome. What I've done is to install each motor separately, and then add tape to the stage coupler to hold the stages together during staging. So far, this has worked quite well.

My first flight was a B6-0 staged to a B6-6. Liftoff was slow and graceful, with staging occurring at a relatively low altitude. The combined rocket was very stable, but I am glad that I used a bigger launch lug and therefore, a bigger launch rod. The sustainer ejected about 2 seconds past apogee, which suggests that a shorter delay would be more appropriate with a B booster. Both booster and sustainer were recovered without incident.

Second flight was a C6-0 staged to a B6-6. Liftoff was again slow, but the model reached a significantly higher altitude and velocity before staging. This time, the sustainer ejected near apogee and was recovered without damage. Unfortunately, my fears about the heavy booster were realized when one of the booster fins broke off upon impact.

Recovery:
The booster is too heavy to "tumble recover". The ROCC flying field is a farm bisected by a grass airstrip. The booster landed on the airstrip and still broke a fin. I would hate to fly off of a hard packed surface or asphalt. I may try adding parachute recovery to the booster soon.

There is plenty of room in the sustainer for wadding and to place the parachute, allowing the sustainer does recover quite nicely on its supplied 12" parachute.

Flight Rating: 3 out of 5

Summary:
This is a great looking rocket that suffers some from poor quality in a couple of the parts and from having too heavy a booster that is overly prone to breakage. Both of these are correctable problems. The booster should recover via parachute, and quality engineering at Estes should take a look at the problem parts. Anyone building this model would be well advised to consider these upgrades as well.

Overall Rating: 3 out of 5