Brief:

It's Estes Mean Machine. It's a single staged rocket originally it is a 24mm rocket made to take D motors but I modified it with a home made 29mm motor mount.

Modifications:

Since I was planning to use an F-50 motor I thought it would be a very good idea to fiberglass it. I fiberglassed it twice with some 1.5oz fiberglass. I also fiberglassed the fins (not on to the rocket). Now for the motor mount, that's a whole other project. First I got a 29mm motor and put saran wrap around it then layered some heavy fiberglass (not sure what) around that. Then pulled the cast off. And wow, what a very strong motor mount. The center rings are 1/4" aircraft plywood. Other than that everything was kept the same.

Construction:

It comes with 4 body tubes that are pain to align, but I got it done with a jig, but even after the tubes are glued together perfect it seemed that the tubes ever so slightly bent. But nothing significant.

Flight:

My first flight was with a F50-9. It was a fairly nice day with a slight wind around 5mph. 5-4-3-2-1- little smoke then it went up very very fast, but after about 1 sec it started to make large screw like turns in the sky. But it keep climbing and climbing. Then the two 24" parachutes ejected perfectly at apogee. I ran after it to the end of the field, then we got in the truck and followed it down the road. We found it 2 miles down the road. The second flight was about 3 months later. But this time I added some weight to the nose, choose to fly it on a smaller F20-6, and took one of the parachutes out. This time the rocket flew perfect to about 2500' but the parachute opened too late causing a small 1" zipper. I would recommend flying it on a F20-4

Summary:

Pros- very fun to fly for mid power and yet reach high altitude. Cons- pain to align the tubes.