Brief:
For seriously high performance in a sleek, beautiful bird, you'd be hard pressed to beat the Blackbird by ShadowAero Composites. I saw a brief reference to a limited edition run of these on TRF and shot a quick email to Dave Triano, proprietor, hoping he hadn't run out. It had been pulled from his website, but Dave kindly offered to scrounge up the parts for one more kit.

This was an expensive kit ($240), but it is made from some amazingly high end materials and I am hugely impressed with the engineering and fabrication that went into this.

Construction:
The "kit" took about a month from order placement to delivery and arrived in a very carefully packed box. The packing and peanuts were hardly necessary as I suspect with an airframe this solid, the USPS truck could run over it and not do any major damage. I use the term "kit" lightly as Dave told me it required so little construction effort, I could be done in 15 minutes. Apparently Dave did not grasp my fussiness and anal retentiveness as this took me nearly a full hour of effort to complete.

The parts list includes:

• Custom cast nose cone
• Composite body tube with composite fins pre-bonded
• Thrust ring/bulkhead (composite)
• Kevlar shock cord
• Nylon streamer
• Vinyl decals (multiple options)
• Acrylic adhesive

As I mentioned, construction on this is incredibly simple. I've also got to be a bit vague on some details as ShadowAero asks customers not to share processes and techniques in public.

The fins are conveniently pre-bonded. For a normal rocket, this would be no big factor, but in this case, the material used to bond and the technique was special and certainly something beyond the typical modeler. Seeing them up close had me reminiscing about my days working in an advanced aerospace composites house with lots of prepreg, resins, layup tables, autoclaves, etc. Suffice it to say these fins will never come off the airframe and had a very nice smooth fillet. All I had to do was sand down feathered ends with a Dremel and file.

Next comes bonding of a thrust ring, reinforced with a coupler. Before bonding the ring, you need to decide how much motor you might eventually put in this thing. The biggest commercial motor that it can handle runs about 23", although Kosdon offers a custom motor that is 28" long (and ShadowAero customers get a discount). I probably will offend the higher altitude gods but decided mine would probably never see anything larger than a basic Aerotech H since I don't want to lose this and don't live anywhere near a dry lake bed.

Bonding is done with a special adhesive supplied with the kit, which comes in a handy tube that mixes and dispenses at the same time. It has a nasty odor, sets in about 20 minutes, and is lighter and tougher than any epoxy I've ever worked with before. More top secret stuff...

The last step of assembly is bonding the shock cord, which is done with a custom fit anchor. It was a little hard to bond this far enough down from the nose to leave room for the streamer and cord. I've got a tight fit as a result, but it worked out OK.

Being designed for extremely high performance, the expectation is that this would fly out of a tower. I have a crude coffee can tower but not for 1.25" diameter models and didn't want to build one for just this rocket. Also, I was worried about scuffing the finish sliding up tower rods. I again wimped out, this time choosing to apply a couple rail buttons.

Finishing:
The airframe comes in a gorgeous black composite finish, mirror smooth, so no finishing is necessary other than applying decals. Since I'd roughed up the surface around the fin fillets a bit though, I decided to hit everything with a very light coat of Rustoleum Black Metallic and painted the nose cone a silver metallic. The finished rocket weighs in at 10.4 ounces so the paint only added about 1/10th ounce.

The kit also comes with some very nice vinyl decals. There are various options of size, color, and company (ShadowAero) and/or model (Blackbird) included. I have used vinyl decals on maybe 3 or 4 rockets now and really love the quality even though it does wind up with raised lettering a bit.

Construction Rating: 5 out of 5

Flight:
I simulated this rocket through my combination of RockSim, Aerolab, and WRASP32, which have always proved to be a highly accurate and reliable group of programs. For the first flight, I wanted to prove out the basic stability so went with a simple Estes E9-6. It was stable although I liken the flight to taking a Ferrari out to buy groceries--a serious abuse of such potential performance. The delay was actually a bit late as it had arced over before ejection. I also got burned by the feeble ejection charge. (Where's that shotgun D12 ejection when you need one?) The streamer poked its head out a bit but decided to stay inside the airframe where it was cozy and warm. The rocket came down horizontally, landed in soft grass, and was completely undamaged.

For a follow-up flight, I went with the motto "if at first you don't succeed, more power" and loaded up an F40-7. That made all the difference in the world as it raced gleefully into the heavens. It was still well on its way up on coast when the delay ran out so a -10 would probably be a better choice. Still, I think this is the highest I've ever lofted an F40 as the apogee topped out at over 2900 feet. The ejection was more robust as well, fully deploying the streamer. However, with streamer out, it came down tail first and plugged itself firmly into the ground, pushing the nozzle all the way into the aft end of the reload case. Lots of cleaning, but zero damage again. Had it landed on the road running alongside our field, I'm not sure which would have won, the road or the airframe.

Recovery:
Given the altitudes this hits, I can't imagine switching to a chute. However, as fast as it comes down and as heavy and hard as this is, I think something a bit slower is in order. I think this begs for altimeter-based deployment although it does not lend itself to dual deploy very well.

While the F40 flight was awesome, I will ding it a point for the recovery speed.

Flight Rating: 4 out of 5

Summary:
This is a very impressive rocket, and I am absolutely delighted with it. Pros would be the incredible materials and production techniques that went into it, along with the engineering. It's a well designed rocket with outstanding performance.

Cons? Price? Of course, when you're dealing with composites and autoclave cycles, the price of this stands up as a bargain. Compared to the other 29mm models in most fleets, it's a bit out on the financial fringe.

Overall Rating: 5 out of 5