Brief:
This rocket is a minimum diameter, 18mm, streamer recovery, futuristic space plane. This is a beautiful little kit that I did my best to mess up. It turned out well anyway.

Construction:
The instruction were the typical high quality one associates with Squirrel Works. They were printed on both sides of a single legal sized piece of paper. They were clear and contained adequate illustrations.

I started off noticing how thin the balsa for the fins is. The instruction says that all but the root edges should be rounded. With me and my aggressive clumsiness, that means trouble. I decided to try and seal/strengthen the fins with CA.

I drizzled thin CA onto the fins and swished it around with some card stock. I did this over wax paper, thinking that I had read that is a good idea. It wasn't. CA will stick to wax paper along with everything else. My fins now have little star tattoos since it was Christmas wax paper. I have the same tattoos. The fins are stronger now, though. Sanding improved things but I decided to go ahead and seal the fins with Elmers before going any farther.

Assembly of the rocket itself was not too difficult. It began with the motor mount. A thrust ring was to be installed with the aid of a provided engine space. Before installing the thrust ring, I cut a little notch in it so that I could provide a Kevlar® shock cord mount attached to the motor mount instead of the provided trifold. After the notch was cut, I tied the Kevlar® around the ring and then inserted it as per the instructions

The next step was to cut out the wrap around fin guide. It matched perfectly and the fin lines and lug lines were marked. The fins were attached with CA but I added a step. Using a safety pin, I perforated the root edges of the fins and the BT along the fin lines in order to form "rivets". Then CA was used to mount the fins and the launch lug. When the fins were dry, they were filleted in the standard manner with yellow glue.

I had some trepidation about the canopy but it turned out to be fairly easy. Its simply a matter of cutting it out with a razor knife and then gluing a single tab. That part did not bother me. Mounting it and getting it faired did. It turned out to be not much of a problem. I used yellow glue and stuck it in place. It seemed to follow the contours of the BT fairly well. The one thing I am unhappy with is my alignment. I could have gotten it a tad straighter if I had noticed in time.

While the glue joints were setting up, I tied the elastic shock cord to the Kevlar® and installed the eye screw in the balsa nose cone. The screw is held in place with a bit of yellow glue. The rocket was then ready for finishing.

Finishing:
Finishing for me started near the very beginning. Before any assembly, I sealed and sanded the fins with Elmer's Fill 'n Seal. After that, I assembled the rocket as per the instructions. When the assembly phase was over, I used Elmer's to seal the nose cone and fill in a few shrinkage cavities along the fillets. I also slathered it on at the intersection between the canopy and the BT so that with sanding, I could fair the seam. The nose cone was high quality and took only a single application. The canopy took more time but that was because of my sanding more than anything else.

The rocket was given 2 coats of white primer and was then wet sanded with #600. After that, I began spraying on thin coats of gloss white. I used a total of three coats.

Some of the other reviews have made mention of the difficulty of applying the decals. Long and skinny decals are always more difficult that ones with more unitary aspect ratios but I had no real trouble with these. I don't credit this to my skill. Instead, I think it is a testament to the high quality of the decals provided. There was no tendency to tear and they went on great. I wish all decals were like this!

I think this is one of the best looking rockets I have constructed to date.

Construction Rating: 5 out of 5

Flight:
The maiden flight was on an A8-3. Since this is a friction fit, I used a bit of masking tape to keep it in. It took off with a very mild corkscrew motion. I attribute this to not getting the canopy on perfectly straight. This is a light rocket so it flew pretty high, even on just an A. Ejection occurred at apogee, just slightly early. A five second delay might be better for this rocket.

Recovery:
The streamer came right out without any problems and the rocket drifted down gently. It seemed to be a little slow for a streamer decent and, on checking, I found that the motor had ejected even with the masking tape used to friction fit it. It landed without a scratch.

Flight Rating: 5 out of 5

Summary:
This is a cool looking rocket. It flies well and looks good on the pad and in the air. It is fairly delicate but, with a modicum of care, should be a reliable part of any fleet that includes it.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5

Other:
Don't believe that wax paper won't adhere to CA! It will!