Brief
I picked up my Broadsword at a local hobby shop about 1 year ago for about $40.00 Canadian dollars. I already have a Big Bertha and I saw the the Broadsword and at that moment I wanted it right away thinking that it would fly like the Big Bertha, and it does. The Broadsword is basically a scaled-up Big Bertha designed to take Estes D's and E's. You also might remember the Super Big Bertha the Broadsword is the same rocket that's been "Beefed Up" to take the more powerful Estes E engine. The main difference between the two is that the Super Big Bertha just had a regular D engine mount and it had no stuffer tube also. Whereas the Broadsword has a stuffer tube that is 24 mm wide and is also the engine mount all in one.

Construction
The Broadsword has the typical Estes instructions which are of pretty good quality and are easy to follow. The Broadsword is in the Challenge series of rockets but they could of put it in the Beta Series because it's not a hard rocket to build at all. the only annoying thing always occurs when you try to glue the fins on a non-slotted body tube, so when constructing the Broadsword I bought a bottle of C/A the I glued the fins on in a minute after I went over the root with some 5 minute epoxy to form a beautiful fillet. I also got a longer shock cord and tied it down to the last Centering Ring at the end of the stuffer tube. Other than that the construction was a breeze.

Finishing
I painted my Broadsword exactly like on the box ( black on top red on bottom) and this proved very east to do. Before painting the rocket I primed the body tube and filled in the grains in the balsa fins with some microballoon filler mixed in with epoxy. This method works Awesome! Because your fins get much stronger and the epoxy doesn't weigh that much because of the microballoon powder mixed with the epoxy. Also you need only 1 coat with this stuff the sand it and your ready to paint, 1 COAT!

Flying
The Broadsword flies like I wanted it to (like the Big Bertha. It has semi-slow lift-offs which I like and flies to around 350 ft with a D and double that on an E. I also replaced the 18" parachute with a 24" parachute because I found that the 18" one was too small.

Recommended Engines: D12-3, E15-4, E15-6.

Final words
The Estes Broadsword was last produced in 1996 and I believe they stopped producing the Broadsword along with the Shadow because of the high failure rate of their E engine on which they were intended to fly on. I Guess they didn't want people using Aerotech engines in their rockets.

All in all I really enjoy this kit and I believe that Estes shouldn't of stopped producing it.