Brief:
This is a simple 3 fin and a nose cone rocket. It is straight forward and easy to build. It would make a fairly good first mid-power rocket.

Construction:
Upon opening the box everything looked to be in good shape, but when I laid the plywood fins down on a table, I noticed that they were warped. So they were put under a few hundred pounds of pellet bags for a few days and they came out nearly perfect. The body tube was a 'normal' tube for mid-power rockets, just cardboard. It had a bright red 24" chute with it too. When building your own, I would recommend putting some LOC 29mm motor tubing in the kit to replace the NCR one, since you can use Aerotech reload and single use motors. The instructions were easy to follow, fairly well written. In some parts you might have to read them over a few times. Building was extremely easy since there were no hard parts to building this rocket. I used 5 and 30 minute epoxy through out construction. Also you will want to put some t-nuts in the aft centering ring since the NCR gorilla retainer will not work on any Aerotech reloads or and Kosdon motors. One bad point to the rocket was the 1/8", 3-ply plywood fins. Since there are only 3 plys, it makes the fins very weak. I think that they need to be glassed. Some 2 ounce fiberglass cloth will work fin. I learned my lesson, read on to find out how. Just a note, most other mid-power kit manufactures use 1/8", 5-ply plywood for their fins, which make them much sturdier! One other thing is, it is very important to get the centering rings lined up, if you don't then your fins will not fit into the slots in the body tube.

Finishing:
Finishing was VERY easy! I just gave it 2 coats of primer and painted it as they showed on the box with Krylon gloss white spray paint and Krylon True Blue spray paint. The decals were nice, I would recommend getting some water and a little soap in a dish to put them on since it makes them much easier to put on as you can move them around.

Construction Rating: 3 out of 5

Flight:
For my first flight I choose the 120 newton second Kosdon G40-7 c-slot motor. I just put some fiberglass insulation in and packed the chute, then put the motor in and put the retaining washer on and it was ready. On ignition the Kosdon G40 came to life and it went up nice a straight! The G40 is a very LOUD motor, especially for a G motor. The 24" chute came right out at apogee. But on landing it broke a fin due to the weak 3 ply ply-wood. This was a easy fix. I have put a 28" chute in it and have since then flown it on a Aerotech G35-4 for a really nice boost, but the delay was a little short. Rocket landed safely under a 28" chute.

Recovery:
The shock cord was 10' of 1/2" flat elastic, this was attached to the rocket by a steel cable that went through a centering ring, this is very strong. For the first flight I used a 24" chute, which was too small and resulted in a broken fin, for the next flight I used a 28" chute which was just fine.

Flight Rating: 4 out of 5

Summary:
The Eliminator overall is a great rocket. The only down side to the rocket is the 3-ply plywood fins and the 24" chute. IF it was not for that, then it would have gotten a 5 over all.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5