Brief:
Exotic re-issue of the original Estes Trident, but with only two BT-20 ejection gas porting tubes instead of three BT-5 porting tubes.

Construction:
Kit comes with:

• (7) balsa nose cones
• (4) balsa fins
• original rubber shock cord and screw eye
• BT-50 engine pod and parachute bay
• BT-20 ejection gas porting tubes
• 18mm engine mount
• excellent decal set; all of excellent quality.

I found this kit at a hobby shop that tries hard to pay attention and take advantage of Estes sales to vendors of OOP kits, presumably that are sitting on their shelf. Instructions were easy to follow. The key to making this a better model than the original Trident is to make sure the ejection gas can freely flow from the engine pod to the parachute pod. Estes did this by using BT-20 instead of BT-5 tubes. Another feature is to provide cardstock frames that are glued around each porting slot on the tubes and then glued to each other. The reason my original Trident failed when I was a lad was probably glue closing off one or more of these ports enough so that the ejection gas blew off one of my ejection tubes with the rocket coming down in pieces with no parachute; which was pretty discouraging to a 12-year old. Anyway, the rocket is solid and has healthier gas flow paths than my original Trident had.

Finishing:
The instructions called for a gloss pearl gray. It took a lot of coats to get enough paint in the crevices between the tubes. Decals are water transfer which look good on top of pearl gray.

Construction Rating: 5 out of 5

Flight:
The recommended motors were B and C. I used B4-4, C6-5, and C6-3; with C6-3 being the best flight. I still used wadding, but enough should be used to make sure that acceleration doesn't jam down under the ejection ports in the parachute bay and remove itself from effectiveness. The rocket flew nice and straight all three times.

Recovery:
I had not used the rubber shockcord but had replaces with a longer elastic cord. An 18 inch chute was a little much and a 12 inch chute not quite enough for this rocket.

Flight Rating: 5 out of 5

Summary:
PRO: good ejection as porting to ensure a long lasting multiple flight rocket.
CON: none

Overall Rating: 5 out of 5