Brief:
QModeling of Temecula, CA has put together a great looking upscale remake of the old Estes Vega rocket. The kit has always been one of the more interesting looking "retro" rockets put in to flight and QModeling has done a fine job with this kit. She is a single stage, single motor, parachute recovered (with real spring loaded landing pods as part of the fins) model made of paper tubes, 8.0 oz light balsa, aircraft plywood, hardboard, and two part liquid plastic nose cones.

Construction:
I purchased two of these kits with the intention of doing a "by the book" kit as well as taking the second kits’ motor mount up to 29mm from the standard designed 24mm. The kits arrived a few days after I ordered them (good service on the part of QModeling). Each kit was in its own triangular mailer. One kit looked great. The other looked as if the postal system tried (and to some degree succeeded) in snapping the container in half. I inspected both kits and discovered that only the main body tube of one of the kits was bent and unusable. I contacted Tom Quinn and he promptly sent out another tube in the mail (again, great customer service).

Laying out the pieces (see Figure 1), I read through the instructions in the 18-page documentation included for construction and finishing. Each of the steps was clear and referenced a diagram showing the overall concept to be accomplished in the step. After reading, I saw only one section that I wanted to change: the shock cord (more on this later). I weighed out each of the dry components, totaling 261 grams dry weight & unassembled.

One of the things I noticed on the package was the absence of motors to use. It declared "D and E" motors but not the specifics of what to use. To answer this for me I went to RockSim and attempted to figure out the answer for myself. Now I'm not a genius at RockSim so I fudged a bit when it came to the landing pods on the fins. I compensated for them by adding the mass of the pods to the overall weight of the fins themselves. I know that this won't compensate for the obvious draggy pods, but at least I could get it in the ballpark. It suggested that a D12-3 & an E9-4 would do well in Estes motors and 4 to 6 second delays in various Aerotech loads. My father always told me to "KISS" my first launches so I planned on the D12-3 for a first flight.

Major assembly is broken in to three sections. First was the assembly of the engine mount. For a low power rocket the design of a fin can that surrounds the motor mount tube isn’t original, but I admit that I've never seen it done with balsa before in a kit. The six plates that fit together to form the fin can were a good fit and went together quickly. No sanding or anything was required as the laser cut balsa was an exact fit. Figure 2 shows the completed motor mount as well as the parts used to construct it. The thrust/centering rings were of paperboard. The rear ring was bonded to the fin can and I had no worries about that one. The forward ring I had plans for. An issue I have with this kit is the shock cord attachment done in the third section. It was done Estes style with the usual too short shock cord and paper attachment style. I dug out some Kevlar® line and some epoxy clay. Drilling a small hole in the forward ring and threaded the line through it (fig 3) and then epoxied this in place with the clay (fig 4 & 5). With that in place I felt that the shock cord would now survive many more flights. Interestingly enough the diagram in step 10 references a "Shock Cord attachment hole" that doesn't exist and isn’t mentioned in the text. CA was used for tacking the fin can together and white glue for all portions after that for extra strength.

The remaining assembly of the motor mount/fin can was very straight forward (fig 6). Setting this aside I began on the major fins, which contain the landing pods.

Again the pods were easy to assemble and presented no difficulties to complete (fig 7). I would note however that the instructions call for light sanding on the pod nose cones, whereas I felt they should be sanded more soundly since they are part of the bonding point between the pods and the fin itself and I wanted good adhesion. Attaching the completed pods to the fins was interesting, but lining up the mold lines on the cones to pass straight through the center of the balsa fin didn't prove too challenging (fig 8). Inspecting the top of the nose cone on both sides of the fin to make sure spacing was even assured me a good, clean fit.

The final section deals with attaching the fin assembly and other loose fins to the body tube. Here the fin can did well. With the laser cut body tube and the fin can, there was little room for the fin sub-assembly to even move around. Squaring these up to be aligned properly was a non-event as they had little play to begin with. The remaining fins all attached easily using CA. I had some reservation about using CA to attach fins like this but after thinking about it, the fins are all non-load bearing and would never take the impact of a landing. Therefore, all they had to survive was boost and parachute deployment and I felt comfortable with that. All fins were filleted with wood glue so the chance of them tearing loose was minimal (even for the F impulses I planned to put this kit through).

The nose cone of the kit is a custom piece made by QModeling. It was very heavy and definitely was needed to offset the massive weight of the fins. The instructions call for using a hobby knife to trim with but I found the material tended to crack more than cut so I used a dremel with a cut wheel instead (fig 9). Then used a sanding block to make it look good and provide some minimal beveling to allow it to enter the body tube more easily.

After attaching the shock cord to my Kevlar® leader line it was only a matter of attaching the parachute and nose cone to complete construction.

PRO's: Easy, fast construction using CA and wood glue for strength where needed. Very nice components to work with.

CON's: Cardboard centering rings. Poor shock cord attachment style. Image in diagram 10 references a hole that doesn't exist.

Finishing:
Here again the direction are straight forward and easy to follow. If you've never completed a rocket before, the instructions lead you through each step in the process offering suggestions on how to achieve a fine looking rocket.

I do have two complaints for the instructions though. The first is the fin alignment template is on page 16 of the instructions. On page 15 (the shared piece of paper with 16) are the decal placement instructions. If you followed directions and cut out page 16, you lost 2 of 3 sides of your decal placement. Either you have to take a photocopy of page 15 before you cut out 16, or after cutting it out you have to tape it back in place so you can use it later. The second complaint would be the decal instructions. Since this isn’t my first rocket I knew better, but the instruction indicate that you have to soak all the decals and then apply them. One of the "decals" is really a sticker and the instructions never talk about it so the beginner would assume that it is simply one more decal that needs to be soaked and then applied--which is certainly not the case!

To get the nice looking finish I wanted, I shot three coats of primer and then three coats of white. Laid out the decals as the directions indicated. Then shot three coats of clear over the top of it all. I did mask of the silver sticker though as clear over it would have ruined its shine (fig 10 & 11).

PRO's: With the overall rocket being white and the quality decals, how can it not look GREAT!

CON's: Instruction sheet on the back of a page to be cut up. Instructions don't reference one being a sticker.

Construction Rating: 4 out of 5

Flight:
Flight day came (a 5-10 mph day in very DRY Wisconsin) and I set up with the D12-3 along with a spacer at the top of it, as the tube is designed to handle the longer E9s as well. I set up my ¼ inch 6-foot rod on a very parched baseball field. With the motor in place I put in "dog barf" as the wadding and loaded the 24-inch Mylar parachute after fluffing it. Put in an igniter and loaded it on the pad. Boost was great (fig 12)! Slow and majestic. Three seconds was just right on the delay and the chute deployed softly and the rocket came back very nicely. Altitude was about 400 feet. You can see from figure 13 that the rocket was angled back at about 25 degrees from vertical. It was at landing that catastrophe struck. The angle of attack caused a single pod to strike the ground first at about a 25 degree angle. The paper tube that holds the spring in place burst apart at one of the spiral seams, pushing the pod towards the engine. This caused the two remaining pods to strike the ground with a force from the inside out (which it isn’t designed to withstand) shearing them off. In Figure 14 you can see damage done to the rocket. Looking back at Figure 13, I think that the parachute never really opened up the way it should have (shroud lines too short or needs a bigger chute?) and the rocket came in a little hot. Add the hard landing surface and the angle of attack to that. Back at the house I rebuilt the Vega and used epoxy clay around all of the pod contact areas. This reinforced the whole fin while sacrificing only a modest amount of weight. Returning to the field a couple of weeks later with no wind, I launched right away with a F21. What a scream of a flight! Backed off to an E18 and still was a magnificent flight.

Con's: Don't fly this in any wind. If it comes in at an angle, it lands hard.

Pro's: Stable in flight. Looks awesome landing on the spring loaded pods (in no wind).

Flight Rating: 3 out of 5

Summary:
I feel that I purchased a good kit. It had some shortcomings with the shock cord attachment method and the mylar parachute. For those flying in even modest winds I would say to bump up the parachute size and strengthen the fin pod filets with epoxy clay instead. Now having said this I can report that QModeling has already taken care of the shock cord and parachute issues and has even gone so far as to add a Nomex® heat shield to the basic kit offering. With these improvements I believe that this is now a GREAT kit.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5