Manufacturer: | Neubauer Rockets |
I just saw these at Discount Rocketry on Monday, and so decided to try the online ordering, which worked great, and I had the kit on Friday. I have all of the other micro kits, from when they were Boyce Aerospace, and knew this would make a great addition.
The kit is 8.5" long, and 18mm diameter, and uses 13mm motors. It has plastic fins, and resin cast nose cone pieces, and a streamer for recovery. The kit comes with a full length body wrapper for the markings, so the only painting is on the nose cone, and the black for the appropriate fins.
The kit went together in about 3 hours including painting, and looks great. There were a few minor things that needed fixing. The nose cone sections needed some sanding to get rid of some mold marks on the ends, and a small void had to be filled. The most annoying thing was that the hole that is molded into both nose sections for the dowell that connects the main cone and the satellite booster, and also acts as the satellite, was molded off center and took some appropriate drilling to make them line up correctly. The body tube was poorly trimmed, and I had to re-cut it.
The body wrapper went on fine, although one antenna marking was on the side that is supposed to be overlapped, and would have been covered, so I had to trim the other side so it could be seen. The nose was glued together with thin CA after it was assembled. The thin CA just wicks in to the joint. The clear launch lug is attached with epoxy after drilling small holes in it along the glue joint so that the epoxy will form little rivets and hold it in place.
The motor mount went together fine and was installed. The fins were pre-cut from a much thinner material than the Boyce kits, and needed minor scoring to come free. They needed just a touch of sand paper. They should make the kit more stable since they are adding less weight than the thicker Boyce fins on the Redstone kit, but they are too thin to get any angles on the edges like in the real thing. They epoxy on, and then you paint the appropriate sides black to match the roll pattern. The instructions are very clear, and easily show you how to paint the right fins. I painted the nose, and added the black paint stripes, and gave it a shot of krylon clear coat to protect the body wrapper.
In conclusion, I think that this is one of the better micro kits, and really looks great when finished. I have no worries about stability, since the Boyce Redstone is slightly more tail heavy, and flies straight with the stock fins. Try one!
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