Brief:
This is a micro-sized downscale of the very popular Deuce's Wild!, scaled to fly on the Quest MicroMaxx engines. While it's a very cool concept, given the tiny size of the components, I would recommend it only to skilled and patient modelers. This is a tiny kit in appearance only--it's still got at least as much construction work as a "regular size" low power rocket.

Construction:
FlisKits has spent a great deal of time preparing to enter the Micromaxx market, and that effort shows up in the quality of the components in this kit. The body tubes are good quality kraft paper and centering rings are laser cut from what appears to be plywood. The kit did not come with a parts list, so when you open it up be careful not to sneeze as you won't know what to look for!

It includes:

• 2 Motor mount tubes
• 1 Body tube
• 1 Balsa nose cone
• Balsa fin stock (4 fins)
• 2 Centering ring motor blocks
• 1 Canted motor mount alignment disk
• 1 Kevlar® (thread) shock cord
• 1 Crepe paper streamer
• 2 Launch lugs

In a clear break from the normal FlisKits instruction style, the micro kits include a single two-sided page of instructions. While these are OK, I don't think they are quite as thoroughly written or illustrated as the standard kit instructions. Still, the illustrations are well done, and the instructions are sufficient to guide an experienced builder. I would rate this a skill level 3 kit, mainly due to the intricacy of the motor mount and the tiny scale of the project.

The motor mount is composed of two tubes with angled cuts at the forward end. They are then bonded on the angled portion with a disk spacer mounted a half inch from the bottoms to keep them aligned. This is very much like the standard Deuce although the standard Deuce doesn't require cut motor tubes. I found this assembly took a good deal of patience as the fit on my angled cuts wasn't exactly perfect.

One interesting aspect of the motor mount that gives you a real taste for the challenge of building micro scale is the engine blocks. Yeah, it's just a basic centering ring pushed most of the way up the tube, but this particular ring is less than 0.25" OD and you have to use something like a toothpick to apply the bead of glue inside the motor tube.

To make room for the canted motor mount, you'll need to scallop out the bottom of the body tube, just like the standard Deuce. This is done using a template and was pretty simple. It does however require a steady hand and sharp blade. Before gluing the mount in, you'll want to anchor the Kevlar® shock cord.

With the motor mount in place, it's a good idea to fillet/fill the seam between the motor mounts and the body tube. Once that's done, you can then cut out and mount the 4 fins. If you don't fill the seams before mounting the fins, you'll find there's no room to work--another aspect of building micros.

The nose cone is held in place by poking a hole in the base and gluing a knotted end of the Kevlar® into it. A wire brad is included to do the poking if you lack a tool.

The original release of the FlisKits micro kits included plastic coffee stirrers as launch lugs (they must have come in a package deal with all those foam cups they're using in other designs). The current release of these kits include very nicely wound paper tubes and older kits can get the paper lugs for free upon request. I held out for the paper ones as I liked the look better, plus felt they were easier to bond.

Finishing:
I've found working in this tiny scale, masking for multi-color paint jobs can be a real pain. For this kit, I skipped my usual seam-filling routine and went straight to a couple of coats of primer followed by 2 coats of Krylon OSHA yellow. I then hand painted the fins and nose a neon green from Testors. The finished effect was pretty good, but it might have been worth the effort to mask and spray.

There were no decals included in this kit. It would probably be cost prohibitive, but I would really like to have seen something in the way of waterslide decals for this as it's a very cool design and would benefit from at least a name on the tube.

Construction Rating: 4 out of 5

Flight:
Clustering can be challenging enough, but when you're talking about clustering Micromaxx motors, you're really working out there on the fringe. First off, don't even think about using that UFO tower launch system that you probably got when you first went into MMX! You might be able to get away with the tripod pad included in the deluxe starter set, but ideally you'll need at least your own launch system to deliver plenty of juice to heat up the nichrome quickly.

The instruction sheet devotes half the space to launch prep and tips. The main thing you'll need to do is learn to rework the plastic plug-in igniters (or make/dip your own). Then you need to extract the nichrome wire and poke the loop all the way into the MMX motors and twist the leads together.

Recovery:
I'm going to have to give Jim the benefit of the doubt on the flight as I only managed to light one of the two motors on my maiden flight and had just finished off my pack that day so I didn't have spares on the field. The single motor, firing at a cant, caused an amusing spin but not enough thrust to lift off, so the Diminutive Deuce just twirled on the rod, concluding the performance with the deployment of the streamer. All that was missing was confetti wadding instead of the dog barf wadding.

I'll make at least another couple of attempts and post updates in the comment/opinion section at a later date

Flight Rating: 3 out of 5

Summary:
PROs: You just have to love the concept of a Micromaxx cluster! Having bought a couple hundred motors when folks were dumping them for under $3 per 6-pack, it's great to finally find some interesting designs in this scale.

CONs: Clustering MMX has got to be a pretty iffy proposition.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5