Brief:
This is a good, clean, single staged rocket which uses an 18" plastic parachute for recovery.

Construction:
There is a single body tube, with three fins. The construction is very simple, and the design is very basic.

The construction was fairly simple with an overall basic design. The Estes instructions were very thorough, and I was not confused at any point. The only problem I had was with the fit of the coupling between the body tube and the payload area. I had to cut off one layer of the red paper in order to fit the two pieces together, but otherwise there were no problems. I didn't use the 'antenna' that were provided, as it would just add extra drag.

Finishing:
I just finished this rocket with conventional spray paint. A couple coats of primer, then a few each of gloss black and white to their corresponding regions. The finishing near the tail fins was difficult as the gloss white had to extend partly between the fins. I think it might be easier to paint the fins first and the body tube separately and then epoxy them together, to get the best finish.

Construction Rating: 4 out of 5

Flight:
The recommended motor was a D12-5, but Estes has unfortunately discontinued this size. I have to go to the C11-5 and D12-3. The C11-5's were great. I got many great flights with this size, which were all visible with a clear sky. When I launched the D12-3 the rocket went almost out of sight, but I forgot to put wadding in and the parachute partially got scorched. Even though there was almost nothing slowing the rockets decent it was perfectly intact when it landed about 50ft. away from the launch site in a pile of snow. I decided that the rocket could handle an E9-6, so I launched one of with that as well. I lost site of it as it passed through some clouds at about 1200 ft, but then saw it about 20 seconds later passing through them, safely floating down. It landed about 100 ft. away from the launch site (0-5mph of wind). All the flights were perfectly straight and extremely predictable, this is a great rocket.

Recovery:
The only problem is this rocket doesn't need a parachute so large. I cut a 2 inch hole in the top of the parachute to help it descend faster, but it still took well over 2 minutes on the D12-3. The shock cord bent the body tube at the top on the D12-3, so I didn't use any more D's on it. I think you could almost recover this thing without any recovery system at all.

Flight Rating: 3 out of 5

Summary:
This rocket was easy to build, flew great, almost too great, as I lost it on my last launch of the day. Only con is that there aren't too many engines you can use standard on this thing, and the D12-3 is not recommended. I'm going to try an Aerotech E30 on this, I don't know what it will do with almost triple the force of the Estes D's. Just don't launch this with a delay time of less than 3 seconds.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5