Brief:
1/70 scale, 18mm cluster of 4 motors or single 24mm motor mount

• Construction:
  18 body tubes + Apollo capsule kit
• 8 laser cut balsa fins or more advanced cardstock over balsa frame
• Choice of single 24mm motor mount of cluster of four 18mm motors
• 10 centering rings
• Various dowels for sanding and building capsule escape tower
• Many other laser cut parts for building the advanced fins and other details.

This was the first detailed scale kit that I have built. Thanks to the excellent Semroc instructions, this kit was a pleasure to build. It took me, off and on over, 3 months to get it completed. That was more because of my work schedule, but the easy-to-follow instructions and convenient checkboxes made keeping track of where I was very straightforward.

As with the many other Semroc kits I have built, the components were excellent quality and I had not problem with fit on any of the parts.

You have a choice of using the supplied laser cut balsa fins or building more realistic looking fins from cardstock over a balsa wood frame. That part was a little messy, but I'm glad I went to the trouble, as it really makes the kit look a lot better than using the laser cut fins.

As I wanted to really fly this model, I made sure to glue everything very well and was pretty liberal using Tight Bond II.

Finishing:
For paint, I used ColorTime (The cheaper little brother of Krylon - same company). I have tested both and believe it or not, I have had better results with the ColorTime. I will probably get beat up over that as most people recommend the Krylon.

In hindsight, I would probably try painting the tanks before assembly. It was quite a job of masking etc to get the scheme down. I would have also liked to see various paint schemes for different 1B missions included in the kit. The actual paint scheme in the plans seems to be from SA-205 (Appolo 7) though the decals for the mission number are SA-207. Someone can correct me if I am wrong there.

Construction Rating: 5 out of 5

Flight:
You have a choice of building the kit with either a single 24mm motor mount or a cluster of four 18mm motors. I opted for the cluster just to get it a little more realistic to the actual rocket. I am happy that I did. We have flown this kit three times as of this writing. All flights were on clusters of four C6-3 motors. I must say that it flys excellent in this configuration.

Our first flight was at Desert Heat 2009 in Tucson, Arizona. I was very nervous after all the time put into construction. Iwas happy with the way the model looked and just kept having flashes in my mind of that complicated little escape tower smashed to pieces.

The flight actually went very well and produced smiles all around, especially from me.

The subsequent flights were all excellent and now that we know what a stable, great flier this is, we have no problem flying it at events.

Recovery:
We had no problems at all with recovery.

Flight Rating: 5 out of 5

Summary:
This is an excellent kit. take your time and opt for the more detailed fins. You will be happy in the end. If you have too many issues with the framed fins, you still have the balsa fins included. Check with some Appolo web sites for painting details if you want to match a specific mission scheme.

Overall, I give this a 5.0+. Definitely one of my favorite rockets to build and fly.

Overall Rating: 5 out of 5

Other:
Get wax paper and lots of pins for gluing and building the escape tower!