Brief:
The BSD Horizon 54 is a stretched version of the famous Horizon 4" sport rocket and has a 54mm motor mount.

Construction:
The kit includes 2 4" BSD tubes, 1 coupler tube, 3 cut and sanded 3/16" aircraft quality plywood fins, centering rings, a bulkhead plate, high quality hardware package, a 54mm motor tube, a nice plastic nose cone, a 36" nylon parachute, a fin alignment guide, computer designed and cut vinyl decals, and 10 pages of instructions. All the parts were included and in a very good shape.

I never would have imagined before that building a HPR rocket would be so easy--in fact, it took me only 9 days to complete! It's really just normal things like beveling the fins, making the fin slots, epoxying the coupler in the payload bay, and putting the motor mount parts together just on a larger scale than what I had done before. It helps that the kit includes excellent instructions with pictures.

The only CON I have is that there is a strange screw (in Germany anyway) included for motor retention. Fearing that I might lose one at the launch field, I used more German-friendly screws instead.

Finishing:
I was a bit worried that the paint would hold reliably on the glassine tubes at first, but I relaxed after lightly sanding the glassine with 600 grit sandpaper and spraying the first coat of primer. There were no problems at all and the finish still looks like it did on the day I painted it! I did the same with the plywood fins and the nosecone since I've often used this primer and paint, both of which are "sociable" with each other and wouldn't take too long to dry! Still, I only had one day left before the event and was very pleased with the result.

Construction Rating: 4 out of 5

Flight:
first flight was at the RJD meeting in Germany, on June 13, 2004, on an AT I195J with a medium delay. When prepping the Horizon 54, I was extremely nervous, since this was my first RMS motor, too. Thankfully, a fellow experienced rocketeer supervised me the whole time and gave me some advice leaving me with a good feeling that it should work. When it was ready for flight, the only remaining fear I had was that it could shred under the power of the I195J, so we placed the pad far away from the spectators to err on the side of caution. At ignition she punched off the pad straight up, moving extremely fast for a BlackJack propellant. Then again, the thrust-to-weight ratio was around 9:1!

Yes, it went really high, but was still visible as a little point. After the 10 second delay (a perfect match for this rocket), the red Rocketman R4C chute opened and there were many "ahh"s in the crowd.

Second flight was at the German BC Experimental Days on August 7, 2004, on an AeroTech I300T-M motor. Again, the Horizon 54 delivered another incredible flight! Unglassed BSD tubes can take extreme flight stress without any problems.

Recovery:
I did not use the included 36" BSD parachute since I had a brand new Rocketman R4C and protective Nomex® shield. I can't judge the BSD Chute, although it appears to be more than adequate but I don't think I'll ever use them because the sink rate and relaxed opening on the Rocketman R4C is just great for the Horizon 54!

Of course theres one thing, I changed in Flight Recovery of this kit: from now on it'll fly with dual deployment because I'm never going to walk a that far again to retrieve it!

Flight Rating: 4 out of 5

Summary:
The BSD Horizon 54 isn't too difficult to build! I would say it's just a matter of using different techniques from LPR/MPR when building and flying HPR rockets. The end result is a great looking rocket that attracts lots of attention.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5