Brief:
This is a skill level 3 kit. It's a faithful recreation of the old Estes kit that I had as a child. The instructions are clear and in good order. The only thing I would like to have seen is a couple of pictures of the finished bird with all decals applied. There are a lot of water slide decals with this kit and I had to do some searching online to get some pictures that I could use as a guide for me to correctly apply the decals.

Construction:
There is a lot of kit here. The material quality is excellent and include:

• A plastic nosecone
• Three body tubes
• Alps water slide decals
• 12" chute
• Instructions
• Pattern Sheets
• Guides
• Balsa Sheet for various fins (not pre-cut)
• Detail panels and discs (pre-cut)
• 

  The quality of the instructions is very good.

  This is not a 3 or 4 fin rocket. It requires patience and attention to detail which for me makes it all the more fun to build.

  There aren't any real "gotchas" that I found while building this kit, however, the builder should pay special attention to correctly marking the Drive Unit tubes as the placement of dowels and card stock cutouts need to be placed carefully. I misaligned mine, but I liked the look so I didn't bother to correct the error.

  Finishing:
  This rocket took me a long time to finish, mainly because of the amount of priming and sanding that needed to be done, coupled with the numerous nooks and crannies that this rocket has.

  One thing that I did was to prime and paint the rocket and main deck separately. I then glued the main deck to the rocket and did one last finish coat over the entire rocket. This way I was able to get the paint where it was needed without having to risk having the paint run by trying to squeeze it into areas where it couldn't easily get to.

  Putting the decals onto this rocket is a chore. There are many to apply so slow and steady gets it done. I would have liked to have a couple of pictures of the rocket showing all decal placement. As it was, I went online and found a number of pictures and used them as reference for setting decals that I had questions about.

  Construction Rating: 4 out of 5

  

  Flight and Recovery:
  I used a B6-4 for the first flight and went to a C6-5 for the next three. On the B6-4 the rocket flew surprisingly well. It followed an arching trajectory that was straight enough to give it respectable altitude. Ejection was just after apogee and recovery was perfect. On the C6-5 again the rocket flew very well. It had that same arching trajectory, not straight up, but not too horizontal either. Each ejection was after apogee and recovery was great.

  I was surprised at how well this rocket flew considering all of the extra pieces it has hanging off of it!

  Flight Rating: 5 out of 5

  Summary:
  I really like this kit. I was impressed by the quality of the materials used. This is a builders kit. It's not just three or four fins and a tube and I really like that. The only thing about this rocket that I would change if I were to rebuild it is that I would add about an inch to the dowel that rests on the one fin. It is not as long as the drive tubes which means the rocket won't stand up for display on it's own. This isn't a complaint. PDR replicated the original kit perfectly. What I did was to craft a stand with a hollowed out dowel that allows the model to stand upright for display.

  Overall Rating: 5 out of 5