Brief:
The V2 xKit is a reproduction of Estes K-22, which was originally released in 1965. Like the original, it flies on 18mm motors and features balsa nose and tail cones. The xKits don't come with instructions but, since they are classics, copies of the original instructions are available on-line. This was my favorite rocket as a kid, and I couldn't resist grabbing one.

Construction:
The parts list:

• BNC-55F balsa nose cone
• BTC-55Z balsa tail cone
• BT-55 body tube
• BT-20 motor tube
• Launch lugs (3)
• Engine block
• Washer weight
• Large screw eye
• Rubber shock cord
• Gauze for cord attachment
• Plastic parachute with separate shroud lines and tape disks.
• Laser cut balsa fins and servo pods
• Dummy casing
• Pattern sheet

The parts provided are true to the original kit. The main difference is the fins are laser cut with both scale and semi-scale versions. The surface of the cones is nice and the tube has almost no spirals. The only negative is the hole in the tail cone is not perfectly centered. This won't hurt and probably is true to the original. However, after seeing Semroc's other products, I was surprised.

Despite the fact that the xKits are recommended for expert modelers, I could have built the kit without any. Well, except for positioning the balsa servo pods and cutting the extra launch lugs into the scale turbine exhaust and pull-out plug details. If you build an xKit, be sure to read the online instructions and the sheet provided with the kit. The provided information includes interesting but unnecessary factoids about Estes and the real V2 as well as a few key bits of data. The instructions identify the CP for both the provided scale and semi-scale fin sets. Also, it's noted that the supplied washer and screw eye are sufficient for the larger semi-scale fins, but ~½oz of additional weight is required for the scale set (not supplied)!

The pattern sheet includes fin patterns and fin alignment guides. The latter have been improved from the originals, which required that the upper and lower guides be aligned by eyeball. Semroc's have a flat face which allows them to be aligned on any flat surface. Simple but a good improvement. I opted for the larger semi-scale fins as I'm not a stickler and these should make sure the rocket is stable in varied launch conditions. The only reason you'll need the fin patterns is for the placement of the balsa servo pods. I merely eyeballed them.

I added a Kevlar® leader and ditched the gauze reinforcement. I wound it around the motor tube, tacked it place with CA and then attached the motor mount with 5-minute epoxy. The original kit said to install the motor mount so the engine was flush with the bottom of the mount. I opted for some overhang to help with friction fitting. I checked stability prior to permanently attaching the nose weight just in case some more was needed. Once verified, I removed the screw eye, filled the hole and nose cone surface with white glue, and reattached the weight. I considered adding a motor hook but decided to keep it like the original.

Finishing:
I used Elmer's Fill 'n' Finish to fill the balsa parts and then shot several coats of primer. I laid down a base coat of Model Masters 'modern' desert tan and added brown and olive drab camo patterns. It looks good from 10 feet...

Construction Rating: 4 ½ out of 5

Flight and Recovery:
I've flown it twice. I friction fit the B6-4 motors and added an ample amount of dog barf wrapped in a section of Estes wadding. I used the stock chute, which is typical plastic with twine and tape discs.

The boost was nice and fast. I couldn't see for sure, but it looked like ejection was early. It recovered fine and the combo of Kevlar® and the stock rubber band was sufficient to keep the cone from whacking the body. There wasn't a smile to be seen (except on my face).

Flight Rating: 5 out of 5

Summary:
This is an easy to build yet detailed little kit and it flies great!

Overall Rating: 4 ½ out of 5

Lift-Off Picture from NARAM Live! by Chris Taylor

Brief:
A "bag of parts" clone kit, in this case a reproduction of the K-22 V-2. For many modelers, this was their first introduction to scale model rocketry. The V-2 was a German developed missile, and as WWII drew to a conclusion, it was the most capable rocket in the world. When America brought Werner von Braun and his crew over from Germany, the V-2 knowledge gave us the much needed jump start to move towards the space age.

Construction:
This one retails for $16 but features some very nice quality custom parts:

• Balsa nose cone
• BT-55 body tube
• Balsa boat tail
• BT-20 motor tube
• laser cut fins (both scale and semi scale versions)
• plastic chute
• rubber shock cord
• 3 launch lugs

The xKits are just parts--instructions must be downloaded from online archives that store scans of the originals. In this case, the JimZ's site features both tiff format and PDF. URLs are provided in the kit as well as hyperlinked from Semroc's main site.

Construction starts simply: the motor tube is glued inside the boat tail. The fit was snug but fine so go light on the glue. The motor block is set via a dummy motor casing (provided with the kit).

You'll need to decide whether to go scale or semi-scale on the fins. Both sizes are provided. Scale fins will look more realistic, of course, but the smaller fins mean less stable, which means adding more nose weight. Semi-scale larger fins result in a rocket that's lighter overall. I went with scale.

Fin mounting on a boat tail is a bit of a challenge. Regular tube marking techniques won't work. The technique featured in this kit is a pair of jigs that are basically centering rings with a squared base. One fits the aft end of the boat tail and the other fits the forward end. Each has a series of tic marks for marking fin lines. Once marked, it's up to you to figure out how to draw a straight line along the curved boat tail. [Tip: Use the thick paper from the kit's header card.]

After the fins are mounted, the next step involves cutting 4 detail parts from launch lugs. You'll definitely want to print the original instructions for this step as they include a pattern sheet.

The last pieces of trim are servo pods, which are tiny balsa strips laser-cut, mounted to the fins. Again, print out the directions for a location marking template.

Shock cord mounting is a bit unusual but a faithful reproduction of the original technique. Instead of the tri-fold method, you tie a knot in one end of the rubber then glue it inside the body tube held in place with a piece of gauze. It strikes me as at least as reliable as the tri-fold, but I'd rather have Kevlar®/elastic any day.

Proper weighting of the nose cone is critical as the V-2 is a notoriously unstable design on its own. If you went with semi-scale fins, the provided nose weight is sufficient, The CG (loaded with motor) needs to be about 7.5" at of the nose tip. For scale fins, the CG needs to be about 6" from the tip, with motor loaded. In my case, this extra weight put me up to a relatively hefty overall weight of 2.44 ounces, well over the 1.6oz "standard" weight on the header card.

Finishing:
Finishing on this was a pain, but the end result is a very nice-looking mostly scale finish. You've basically got a checkerboard type of black and white so there's a lot of tricky masking involved.

I started by filling grains an spirals. Lately I've been using honest to goodness Elmer's Fill 'n' Finish (in tub form, from Lowe's) rather than the Elmer's Wood Filler. When I put a dab on my finger then wet the surface of a nose cone, I can quickly rub a light layer across it that sands off very easily after a couple hours. The result is a mirror smooth finish with very little effort.

The whole rocket got two coats of primer followed by two coats of Krylon gloss white. It's not as shiny as Rustoleum but dries much faster so I can mask and accent after about 24-30 hours.

For masking, I mostly used a new product I absolutely rave about: Frog tape. It's green (thus the name), has pretty good tack (stronger than blue tape, weaker than regular masking tape), but really grabs at the edges and is great at preventing bleed through.

Fin masking is straightforward--two opposing fins are masked off (remaining white). Just above the fin lines, extending to the end of the body tube, you divide into fourths, with opposing sections masked off/white. The header card illustrates this fine. Please note that these are not pure/straight lines, as they start on the sloped surface of the boat tail.

Now for the really hard part: the nose cone. There are a total of 8 sections on this nose, all sloped to some degree. I wound up taking a piece of paper and taping it around one side of the nose cone. Next, I took a piece of string and pinned one end to the tip of the nose, then pulled the other end taught where the nose intersected one of the white/black seams of the body tube. I then traced that string line (chalk line might have worked, but would have been too thick). I repeated this for the other "edge", running from the nose tip to the other end of the black/white seam from the section I'd lined up with on the first line. The result was a template that looks like 1/4 of the nose cone.

I then took this template, and traced the outline onto two pieces of masking tape, then cut out the shapes from the tape. Finally, since the black and white sections don't run all the way up the nose, I marked points roughly 3/4 of the way up on each tape silhouette and cut off the top sections of each. I then applied the "bottom" of each tape silhouette on opposite sides of the nose cone using the body tube patterns to align with. I then took the remaining top pieces of the tape silhouettes and applied them just above and between the taped bottom portions. The intersected perfectly, which meant I did a good job with the template.

Now with all that taping done, even using the excellent no-bleed Frog tape, which I've now seen available at that major home supply center with the orange banners for about half what I paid, I didn't want to risk black bleeding under onto the white so I shot the whole rocket with one very light coat of white primer. This way, the primer would penetrate (if anything could penetrate), and form a tight seal. The "bleed" would basically be the same white as the undercoat, so would not be noticed. After the primer, I shot two coats of gloss black. When I removed the tape, the seams were perfect.

Construction Rating: 4 out of 5

Flight:
First flight was with a C6-5, figuring with all my added weight an A would be grossly underpowered and a B6 in the moderate winds might get into trouble with less velocity off the rod. There was a little bit of a corkscrew action off the rod as it needed to fight for stability, but it quickly found a vertical path, even weathercocking a bit. The -5 was the right delay, deploying just past apogee.

Recovery:
Recovery on this was almost as much fun as finishing it--that rubber shock cord proved to be feeble, especially with my added nose weight for scale fin stability. It snapped right away, leaving my body to tumble down and the nose cone to ride the thermal in the 8-10 mph winds towards the edge of our park and almost into the nearby subdivision.

I was very fortunate to be flying with my club rather than solo. Two guys had spotted the body tumbling down and tracked it, while another buddy and I went after the nose cone/chute. I blinked for a split second as it went into the sun and lost it, but my buddy still had it. He gave me the line, while admitting that it was "way out there"--meaning about 350-450 yards and likely in 4-5 foot tall weeds and thorns.

I caught up with the two guys that tracked the body, and they had just found it. Coincidentally, one of them later managed to spot and track a CATO'd 24mm motor that ejected from a rocket and landed in 2-foot tall brush more than 50 yards from the pad so his vision was amazing that day.

I then started on the line to my cone. After walking for about 25 yards, I realized with the stiff breeze, it really wasn't tough to track much of anything, as all "lines" had to follow that breeze, and I aimed a degree or two left to better follow the wind. Sure enough, 5 minutes later I walked right up to the cone, which I'd have never been able to spot from even 5 feet away in either direction.

I was extremely lucky to have found both parts and am grateful to my fellow QUARKers who saved the day. All that prep and finishing work would have been a shame to waste on just one flight.

Flight Rating: 3 out of 5

Summary:
Needless to say, I'll be ditching that rubber shock cord for some good ol' modern Kevlar®.

Other than the shock cord, I think this is a fine rocket and decent scale kit for anyone interested in starting to build "real" models rather than models of imaginary vehicles. The xKit value is also very appealing.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5

(Contributed - by Dick Stafford - 10/12/08)

Brief:
This is the second Semroc V2 that I’ve built. You can see my earlier review elsewhere on this page along with (at least) one other opinion of this kit. I won’t repeat a bunch of background in this review and instead will focus on what I found and did differently. Most obviously, this build utilized scale fins whereas my previous V2 has the larger semi-scale fins (LASER cut versions of both are provided).

Construction:
Parts included:

• One Semroc V2 xKit
• Lead shot
• 18” of Kevlar® twine
• 3/16” launch lug

I decided to ditch the stock recovery components for a long piece of Kevlar® twine. I tacked the twine to the motor mount with CA and then wrapped it in a loose spiral. I coated the inside of the tail cone with 5-minute epoxy and twisted the mount, wrapped with the twine into position. I used the provided dummy motor to support the mount during this process.

The fins and trim components all were installed in accordance with the original K-22 instructions downloaded from JimZ’s site. Nothing else to add here.

As noted in the brief instructions, the scale fin version requires additional nose weight. I referenced Semroc’s instructions, this thread on YORF and a RocSim model to determine how much nose weight was required. I used the scale file found in that thread and modified it for my design (including a tweak to the fin position). I drilled a 2.75” x 1/2” hole in the base of the cone using my drill press. I also carefully torque the cone while the press was running to expand the diameter a bit. I added enough lead shot (˜0.75oz, plus epoxy) so that it balanced the model at ˜5.2” from the tip without motor.

Finally, since I noticed some rod whip on my first V2 when powered with a C6-5, I swapped the provided 1/8” lug for a 3/16” lug.

Finishing:
Since I used the scale fins, I decided that I’d try a scale-style paint job. I’ve always liked the yellow/black patterns featured on the first few rounds fired at White Sands so I decided to pattern mine after round number two. I started with filling and sanding. When I went to grab the primer, I found I was out. Instead, I used silver XMetals® basecoat as a uniform base color. I used Testors'® yellow spray and coincidentally, silver was one of the recommended base colors. I masked the roll patterns with Frog Tape and used Rustoleum® black, sprayed into a plastic cup to make it brush-on. The Frog Tape didn’t work all that well for me. In retrospect, I knew that I should have used a light overcoat of yellow to seal the edges, but hoped the Frog Tape would stand up to its claims. Bottom line - this is another ‘5-foot’ finish job.

I'm trying to keep down rating inflation in my reviews and just couldn't call this an average kit due to the nose and tail cone issues. I added half a point because of the residual memory of my first kit.

Construction Rating: 2 ½ out of 5

Flight:
The first and only flight (so far) was on a C6-5. I also used a 12” nylon 'chute in place of the stock plastic one. The boost was quite wobbly and it weathercocked a little.

Recovery:
It ejected close to apogee and recovered in good shape. I started with a below average rating for flight/recovery because of the amount of wobble on a recommended motor. I bumped it to average because it seems to be quite robust.

Flight Rating: 3 out of 5

Summary:
The scale fins on this kit make it look a little better, but the penalty is added weight. Even with the recommended amount of added mass it was marginal on the heavier C6. I’ll try a B6 next. The nose cone fit issue was easy to correct, but I don't expect to have to in this day and age. Based on my past experience with Semroc, I know the problems I had are not typical and I bet they'd even replace it if asked. I'll count this instance of this kit as average. I'd probably be more critical of these shortfalls in other 4FNC kits. However, there is an inherent coolness factor in this retro kit.

Overall Rating: 3 ½ out of 5