Brief:
Rocket releases small glider.

Construction:
Booster has large balsa wing-like fins with smaller fins on the wingtips. NC is plastic. Shock cord is the typical Quest Kevlar® string attached to the motor mount that transitions to an elastic cord. A 14 inch parachute is used.

Laser cutting on the fins is excellent. The parts are precisely cut and fit well. Instructions are thorough, clearly written, and well illustrated.

I modified my model--I added a baffle made of two offset disks of balsa to reduce the need for ejection wadding.

The wings are made up from four pieces on both the booster and the glider. Everything lines up and fits well. However, the fin design is weak. The large wing tip fins on the booster are fragile and are bound to hit first on landing. I broke two fins and knocked one off on the first flight even though the landing wasn't particularly hard.

I'd recommend not mounting the top wingtip fins at the 10 degree outward cant as shown in the instructions. (This is done purely for looks.) Instead, I'd mount them perpendicular to the main wing and then add a small piece of balsa to the outside as a stiffener. This piece would tie the upper and lower wing tip fins together and sandwich the end of the "wing" fin making it much harder to knock a tip fin off on landing.

The glider is small, about 6 inches long with a wingspan of 4.5 inches. The glider is very small and hard to test glide. As it turned out during the first flight, the glider was very nose heavy. I'd recommend reducing or eliminating the heavy body tube joiner used to attach the plastic nose cone to the body tube on the glider. That would take some weight out of the nose.

Finishing:
Kit recommends not finishing the glider for best flight performance, but includes complete painting instructions in case you want to paint it anyways. Models like this are built more for looks than absolute flight performance, so I painted mine. I primed the model with white Krylon primer then gave it a light coat of gloss white. I used acrylic dark gray for the underside of the glider and booster.

The waterslide decals worked well and went on easily. I used a Future floor polish as a setting agent and as a final gloss coat.

Construction Rating: 4 out of 5

Flight:
I flew the model on a B6-4. It boosted straight up with the large fin area. Model uses a standard metal retaining hook. No problems there.

Glider separated easily at apogee and dove sharply to the ground. It is so small and light that it suffered no damage.

Recovery:
I used one small piece of wadding as additional protection for the chute. The baffle worked well. The chute was unmarked by the ejection gases and deployed fully. Even so, the model lands hard on the fragile fins.

I'd recommend modifying the Kevlar® shock cord installation so the model lands in a more horizontal position,

Flight Rating: 3 out of 5

Summary:
This is a sharp looking rocket. Construction is a bit more involved than most due to the large balsa wings and fins. I think the design of the fins is the weak point as they are easy to break on landing.

Overall Rating: 3 out of 5