Brief:
Previously only offered as a free gift to folks who had promoted Semroc products (known as "recruiters"), this was recently released to the general public. It's a retro-repro of the 1967 Centuri kit from the height of the space race era. With its space probe nose cone and 6 Redstone-type fins, this certainly has a distinctive appearance and should help Semroc recruit a few new customers. At $12, it's a reasonably good value.

Construction:
Parts list includes:

• ST-855 upper body tube (white paper with very light spirals)
• ST-1380 main body tube
• ST-730 (BT-20) motor tube
• Balsa nose cone
• Balsa transition/screw eye
• Balsa fins (6/laser cut)
• 12" plastic chute kit
• Kevlar®/elastic shock cord
• Metal engine clip
• Engine block/centering rings
• Waterslide decals

This is a fairly simple kit to build with good instructions and plenty of helpful illustrations. I would rate it a skill 2 on a scale of 1-5 mainly due to the 6 fin pattern and slightly challenging paint masking scheme that entails.

Construction begins with fin preparation. Semroc uses a very nice laser, which not only cuts out the fins cleanly but leaves a little logo and model name burned into the sheet. If you're building in batch mode (many rockets at once) as I sometimes do, having the name burned onto the sheet is a nice touch. After sanding down the fins and rounding the edges, I filled the grains with diluted Elmer's Fill 'n' Finish (however, the instructions describe a very effective 3-coat balsa sealer process).

The motor mount is a bit more complex than necessary. Rather than the basic BT-20 and a pair of centering rings, this kit uses a coupler with a pair of centering rings attached on the ends. The BT-20 with hook and Kevlar anchored to it is then inserted into the coupler/ring assembly. Another coupler slips over the BT-20 to hold the motor hook in place. The result works fine but could be done without the couplers to shave a few nickels off the cost. I very much like the Kevlar/elastic recovery system used on all Semroc kits.

Fins are mounted to the body tube using an outline in the instructions. I prefer a wraparound guide but this worked OK. I tacked mine on with CA then applied a yellow glue fillet. After that cured, a thin white glue fillet was applied. I find white glue doesn't shrink or bubble nearly as much.

The instructions call next for mounting the two launch lugs. I consider this a minor gotcha, and would have suggested marking a launch lug line before mounting the fins. This makes it much easier to line up perfectly rather than trying to eyeball it using a launch rod. Also, be careful how you place the lower lug. Since the fins will be painted a contrasting color, it's a lot easier to mask if the lug doesn't line up forward of the end of the fin. This way you don't have to tape over the lug. Another option would be to mount the lug entirely above the forward end of the fin although I prefer close to the aft end for better launch control.

The transition section serves as the anchor point for the shock cord and gets a screw eye glued into place for this. Mine was a bit rougher than the usual Semroc balsa and took two coats of Fill 'n' Finish to fill most of the grain.

The upper tube serves as a payload, so the nose cone/probe is just inserted onto the end. Since the tube is roughly the size of a BT-5, I didn't plan on launching with any payloads, so I went ahead and glued my nose cone in place. It's a very unusual probe-like design, so I figured losing it would result in an expensive replacement part.

The parachute is Estes type 12" plastic which you need to cut out. The shroud lines are attached using tape discs. The Semroc discs are high tack and work very well.

Finishing:
This is a very unusual design, and I wanted to do a nice job on the finishing. After making sure the balsa grains were filled and sealed, I painted in a little diluted Fill 'n' Finish to fill the tube spirals. I then applied a coat of Plasti-Kote gray primer, which I then sanded back down to basically the raw tube. This effectively filled out all the tube spirals. I still had small seams on the payload tube where the transition and nose cone join, but it looked like these would be masked by decals.

The rocket got two more light coats of white Krylon primer, followed by a good 600-grit wet sanding to remove the tack and then two coats of gloss white finish. After allowing the white to cure out, I masked off the lower tube between the fins and made 4 little boots to mask 4 of the 6 fins. I then painted 2 opposing fins red, along with the upper half of the nose cone/probe. Once the red dried, I removed two of the boots and covered the red fins, leaving 2 opposing fins exposed, which I painted blue. I repeated this process again, covering the blue and painting the exposed white fins gray. This holds fairly close to the originally spec'd paint scheme.

There is a sheet of waterslide decals supplied with this kit, which add a nice finishing touch. The decals are rugged and easy to work with although they do tend to grab pretty firmly when placed on the rocket. I wound up goofing on my launch lug placement, and the upper lug fell smack in the middle of the roll pattern, forcing me to trim the decal a bit to avoid going over the lug. I also had to trim the upper stripe a bit as the decal was at least 1/2" too long.

After the decals had set, I then wiped everything down with Future acrylic polish, which leaves a rugged high gloss finish and doesn't mar the decals.

Construction Rating: 4 out of 5

Flight:
For the first flight, I wimped out with an A8-3. Hey, it was pretty windy (10-12 mph) and I was wearing shorts and getting killed walking through tall/sharp grass on recovery... The A8-3 got it off the pad but not much farther than that. It peaked at about 100 feet, arced over, and deployed at least 1-1.5 seconds late. The chute came out fine, and I had my short walk finally.

Embarrassed at my wimpy flight (my son was with me and was wholly unimpressed), I jumped it up to a C6-5 for the second flight. Much better now. There was plenty of altitude and deployment was just a tad late. Another fine chute deployment, along with a thermal, and I had a punishing trek of about 1/3 mile to recover this one. (It drifted at least 50 yards on the ground while I was chasing it.) No damage and ready for another flight on another day.

Recovery:
The 12" chute is fine for this, and the elastic/Kevlar combination is holding up very well with no signs of wear.

Flight Rating: 5 out of 5

Summary:
I'm intrigued by the innovative designs of Semroc's spring 2005 new releases and this one was the first of the group I got around to building. It's a very nice build, great design, and very good flyer. Definitely at or near the top of the Semroc "cool" list and highly recommended. I'm going to get a lot of mileage out of this one, while my original "Recruiter" version (limited edition, my number is in the low 40's) rests safely in the collectible section of my build pile, so far back there's no chance I'll ever get to it.

Overall Rating: 5 out of 5