Brief:
The 500-F was a facilities checkout vehicle supporting the Saturn V program. Full sized and almost fully functional, this is another fine Saturn that never flew (see my Zooch Saturn C5 review). Fittingly, this is a review of a not-yet-introduced beta kit, so for the time being you'll never get to fly one either. Still, it's a neat kit, great scale model value, and if you bug Wes hard enough, he just might kit one of these up for you too.

Construction:
Like all Dr. Zooch kits, this one comes in a distinctive small white cardboard box that sized just right to also hold the finished model (in two pieces). It's a small thing, but to me the packaging is one of my favorite aspects of Zooch kits--it stores the model nicely and has a picture label on the outside so you always know what's what.

For the beta kit, the parts list on the instructions was incomplete. I was also missing a couple parts, but that issue was quickly resolved.

The parts list:

• 1 BT-60 body tube
• 1 BT-20 motor tube
• 2 20/60 centering rings (black fiber)
• cardstock wraps/patterns
• 2 BT-20 tubes
• 2 balsa transitions
• balsa fin stock
• waterslide decals
• red garbage bag chute
• assorted dowels/trim do-dads

Instructions are another distinctive feature of Zooch kits, and this one is typical. You'll either love or hate 'em (and you'll have to appreciate sarcasm and dry humor to love 'em). The instructions were generally well written and illustrated although it certainly helps to have built at least one other Zooch kit, preferably a Saturn V before.

Motor mount construction is an 18mm tube, metal clip, and pair of 20/60 centering rings. No motor block is included so it wouldn't be a bad idea to slip one in if you've got a spare.

Then the instructions suggest pre-painting most body parts. Considering the paper wraps added later, this is an excellent suggestion. Don't bother painting the 60/20 transition as it's covered by a wrap later.

Next up are the fin fairings. These are cut from a BT-20 tube after you've glued pattern wraps to the tube. It's a fairly slick idea. One suggestion I have for making the cutting go more smoothly would be to slip in a spent 18mm motor before you cut. This keeps the tube from bending in.

Then comes the S-II/S-IVB adaptor. This is nothing more than gluing a paper wrap to the balsa transition. I found the wrap to be slightly oversized but easily trimmed it to fit.

The body wraps fit fine, but the beta instructions had a typo on the spacing of the lower wrap that I didn't catch until too late, making mine a not-very-scale 500-F. The space between the lower two wraps was listed as 11 1/16 inch (with "inch" typed overlapping the 1/16). A couldn't tell if it was meant to be 1-1/16 or 1-11/16, so guessed 1-11/16. Wrong. 1-1/16 might work, but I suspect it was supposed to be 11/16. I'm sure the problem will be corrected before final release.

With the wraps in place, you can then attach the fairings then start to work on the Apollo spacecraft/upper stage. This starts with a (pre-weighted) balsa transition and you add a paper wrap, paper shroud, and wood dowel tower. There's a paper wrap tower base that goes around the dowel and a red shroud base cap. It doesn't look too bad for ant scale, however, I do still prefer the painful yet detailed work of making a tower by hand as it was an option in Zooch's earlier Saturn kits.

Next up is cutting and painting then attaching the fins. My fins didn't quite fit through the slots I cut in the fairings, so I had a good deal of tinkering/rework to get everything in place.

At this point we hit on one of my pet peeves of the Zooch Saturn V's: the wraps don't cover the entire black stripes on the lower stage. You have to "connect" the lower two wraps with black paint. This doesn't quite match the wrap shade, and unless you're extremely careful, you might find your wraps don't line up perfectly either. I have no idea why this isn't done with either a single wrap or at least printed black inserts.

The last "construction" aspect is fabrication of the F-1 engines. These are fairly tricky but are an amazing detail, especially once you hit them with silver or aluminum paint. See any of my other Zooch Saturn reviews for more details on these plus pictures.

Finishing:
Since the majority of the finishing is done via paper wraps, finishing this is fairly easy. The only real finishing work, if you could call it that, lies in cutting/shaping the various details out of dowel stock, then painting and attaching them. That probably accounted for about 3 hours of my time versus the roughly 1 hour I spent painting the tube/transitions and attaching the wraps.

Construction Rating: 3 out of 5

Flight:
For the maiden flight I decided to go for the lowest recommended motor, an A8-3, mainly because I had one left in a pack and needed something to stick it in. As the instructions note, "that's for wimps--this is a Saturn V! You're a steely-eyed rocket engineer, so shove a C6-3 into this baby and watch it blast out of sight". The A8-3 was indeed, a very wimpy choice. It flew fine although barely 100 feet up, and I'll certainly be flying this on Bs and Cs in the future.

Recovery:
The recovery on this is a red garbage bag with adhesive reinforcements and shroud lines. It is effective although on other Zooch kits I've found the Kevlar® rips through the reinforcements. I typically wind up swapping out the stock chute for a 15" rip stop nylon from my range box.

Flight Rating: 4 out of 5

Summary:
This is another fine addition to the Zooch Saturn line. If you haven't built one, you're really missing out. I don't know that I'd start with this one, but it's certainly worth considering if you're looking for a Saturn V that's a bit off the beaten path. Most of the Zooch Saturns have never been previously offered in kit form by any manufacturer, so this is your only chance to build a unique slice of history.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5