1.89" body tube

Balsa nose cone

1.89" coupler

Plywood fins

Balsa fin skins

29mm motor mount with plywood centering rings

Half round conduits

Elastic shock Cord

Steel wire shock cord anchor

Plywood bulkhead

Waterslide decals

Stir sticks and syringes for epoxy

Components are top notch. I'm subtracting one star because the fins have through-the-wall tabs but the body tubes are not slotted.

The first thing I did was cut the fin slots in the body tube. This is not something you have to do very often, but with a sharp knife blade it's really not too difficult. They do not need to be perfect as any blemish will be covered by epoxy fillets. Once you have the slots cut you can position the centering rings on the motor tube. The wire shock cord anchor was inserted in holes in the forward centering ring. A loop in the wire is threaded through a metal sleeve which is then crimped, A similar loop is made in the forward end of the wire anchor. Here I deviated from the kit aa I replaced the elastic with Kevlar. With the motor mount done, I glued the motor tube into the aft end of the body tube. I made sure there was enough motor tube extended from the rear centering ring to allow for a Estes 29mm motor retainer to be installed. I used System 3 15-minute epoxy for all construction.

You have an option with the fins. There are plywood fins with the option to add balsa skins. The balsa skins are cosmetic and evidently make the fins more scale like. Use of the skins is optional, but I decided to use them. After attaching the skins I rounded the corners and glued the fins into their slots. Once the epoxy dried I added fillets made from epoxy and micro balloons. Then the 4 strakes were added in line with the fins. The semi circle strakes only required some rounding on the forward end.

Now it was on to the nose cone. It's one of the bigger balsa nose cones I have seen. The shoulder of the nose cone is small enough to fit inside the 1.89 coupler. Before the coupler was glued to the nose cone, I epoxied a couple of large washers to the base of the nose cone. Then the plywood bulkhead is glued into the end of the coupler. This was done after an eye screw was added to the bulkhead. I added epoxy to both side of the bulkhead around the eye screw. The Kevlar was tied to the eye screw using an improved clinch knot and a 24" nylon parachute was attached.

All that was left was painting the rocket and applying the minimal decal. ASP provides detail painting instructions on their website, but the paint scheme is pretty easy to apply. The instructions say the nose cone is aluminum but photos I had seen showed it a light gray. I went with the gray. One fin is black and everything else is white. The lone decal is an "Aerobee 100 Jr".

The ASP information say it should weigh 9 ounces but mine came in an 10.9 ounces. The washers added to keep the center of gravity forward probably accounts for most of the difference.

This is a fairly small rocket for a 29mm motor and in fact most of my sims show the 24mm E and F motors are quite acceptable. It was an enjoyable build and I used high power techniques to produce a robust rocket. I highly recommend it if you like scale models and especially the Aerobee family. I would like to see the kit come with a slotted air frame, but it was not too much of a hassle to cut the slots myself. Cudos to ASP for producing this kit. There are a lot of Aerobee kits on the market, but I believe this is the only Aerobee 100 Jr.