Brief

Several years ago, my brother-in-law built a Der Red Max upscale using an LOC Lil' Nuke as a donor.  That Christmas he drew my name in the family gift exchange, so I asked for a Lil' Nuke kit of my own with which to do my own conversion.  Not wanting to do something that was frequently seen, I started the project with the idea of building a Centuri Magnum Hornet upscale that I planned to call the Hemi Hornet.  The project got as far as having the fins attached and was looking great, but when I went to do the sanding and sealing, the fins just peeled away from the body tube like stickers off of the backing paper.  I never figured out what the problem was, but it was definitely a bucket of cold water on the project for me, so much so that it languished in the corner of my shop for the next eight or nine years.  In that time Semroc released their own version of the Magnum Hornet, so I started thinking of another kit to upscale.  As it turned out, the Estes Ninja had been the rocket that had made a BAR out of me back in 1994, and it happened to match up nicely with the dimensions of the Lil' Nuke kit.