Brief:
This is slick looking futuristic design featuring a large tail ring and lots of transitions, resulting in something a far cry from the ordinary.

Construction:
Parts were good quality, and working from nose to tail include the following:

• Balsa nose cone
• BT-55 upper body tube
• BT-50 main body tube
• BT-55 lower body tube
• BT-101 ring fin
• Laser-cut balsa fins
• Cardstock transition patterns
• BT-20 motor mount
• Metal hook
• Assorted centering rings
• 12" mylar parachute
• Kevlar®/elastic shock cord
• Waterslide decals
• Peel & Stick decals
• 1/8" launch lug

Because this has so much going on in terms of transitions and body tube sizes and placement, I'd probably rate this about a 2.5 or 3 on the 5-scale for degree of difficulty. The instructions are fairly well written, though a bit sparsely illustrated. The experienced modeler will have no trouble building this, but would have to be careful lining everything up.

The motor mount is a standard 18mm tube with CR20/5 block, metal hook, and a pair of centering rings. The completed assembly is stuffed into the BT-50 main body tube.

The BT-20 main tube gets marked with 10 different lines that will eventually be used to locate centering rings and transition alignment marks. Three more marks go along the vertical axis for fin alignment using a wrap-around template.

Next comes the fun part of the construction--making the shrouds and lining them up. There are 4 cardstock shrouds. To minimize the exposed seams, the instructions call for a butt joint rather than an overlapping seam. This is a great technique. There was just one slight problem. I stupidly built all of my transitions at once and didn't test fit them first. Even though I cut a bit inside/outside the edge lines to ensure slightly that the ends were slightly larger, each of my transitions proved to be a bit too small for the body tubes. Even after sanding them open a little, it was still too tight, especially where the transition has to be slid down the BT-50 smaller end first. I wound up printing my own and it worked out fine.

The 4 transitions slide down the BT-50 and the wider ends are held open/in place via thin centering rings. 3 of the 4 butt up against sections of BT-55 tubing, and the aftmost end of one is open, serving as a sort of boattail.

Once the transitions and body tube are in place, it was time to test fit the fins. They're supposed to fit snugly against the aft transition, BT-50, and second transition. Mine fit fairly well, though still took a generous bead of glue and a little filler afterwards.

The BT-101 ring fin was a perfect fit over the fins. I then tacked on the two launch lugs and construction was done.

Finishing:
Painting this was fairly easy, though I made one craftsmanship goof--I neglected to fill the spirals on the inside of the BT-101 ring fin, and they're pretty deep grooves.

I hit everything with a base in gloss white, then followed up masking off two of the inner transitions and finished them off in gloss black.

I had some minor issues with the decals--the waterslide decals are nicely printed, but on very thin and fragile material. I was either giving them too much time in the water, in which case they'd start to separate from the backing and wind up folding over and sticking to themselves, or not long enough in the water in which case they'd bite right away when mounting, so that they'd wind up breaking when trying to reposition.

The second decal sheet is actually peel & stick, not waterslide, which I didn't catch until soaking the first decal for a good 30 seconds, wondering why it wasn't sliding off. It would have been helpful if there were some mention of this anywhere, such as in the instruction sheet or even on the parts list (which indicates one decal sheet, not two). Once I'd gotten past my goof and dried out the soaked decal, applying the rest was fairly easy, though I'll note that the (3) decals that go on the outer band of the BT-101 ring fin are a bit too long, and would overlap a bit. I trimmed off the last black stripe on each, shortening them enough to fit perfectly with no major gaps or overlap.

Construction Rating: 3 out of 5

Flight:
Winter held off for another week, tempting me to once again ignore the growing lawn and list of chores and put a few rockets up into the clear sky. Winds were steady at 6-8 mph when I sent this up on a C6-5. It was fine, even weathercocking a little bit, and the -5 delay deployed the chute just past apogee, nose down.

Recovery:
This kit came with a 12" silver Mylar chute, which worked fine and I was able to recover with hardy a scratch.

Flight Rating: 4 out of 5

Summary:
Overall, this is certainly got some cool styling going for it, though I have to ding it slightly for undersized/tight transitions and very fragile decals (plus the odd mixture of waterslide and peel N stick). It looks good, though, and flies great so is certainly worth considering if you want to start getting away from the ordinary and developing some new craftsmanship skills as well.

Overall Rating: 3 out of 5