Estes Prowler

Finished this rocket in May but hadn’t flown it until Sunday for a variety of reasons. An Estes Prowler, an OOP kit very similar to the Majestic, a mid-power E2X kit.

Estes Prowler on the launch pad at CENJARS.

I did some minor tweaks on this to improve the recovery line, add a rail guide in addition to the 3/16in lugs, etc.. It came with a nice looking pink body tube. Sadly one of the launch lugs slipped while setting and I didn’t notice. So I had to heat gun it off, sand paper the tube, etc etc, and wound up having to repaint the whole thing to deal with the blemish.

The big thing with the Majestic, and I assume this as well, is that you have to do something to keep the parachute, recovery line, etc. from falling lower in the rocket at ignition. It happens easily and the rocket becomes completely unstable. At the moment it’s one of my biggest criticisms of Estes kits: They’re selling the Majestic (and similar) as E2X kits for relative beginners, but they have a serious design flaw that’s actually kind of subtle to diagnose.

In any event, here’s a flight on a windy day on an E16-6, to an estimated 750–800ft, with the chute held to 200ft.

And video of takeoff from Brett’s action cam by the launchpad.

Estes Doorknob

My build of one of the bigger Estes kits: A casual-scale model Doorknob, a research rocket designed, built, and flown by Sandia National Laboratories in the late 50s.

Knock knock!

My construction followed the standard Estes instructions caveat running the recovery line to the motor mount. I also did the markings with spray paint instead of the provided waterslide decals. I was pleased with how the faux fin brackets turned out after being built up a bit with several layers of black and then metallic silver.

This is my favorite rocket aesthetically—that classic not-quite-stubby look, visible brackets & holes, quartered paint scheme, and orange! Just beautiful. So I was pleased this build came out well and to get a near perfect debut flight to 600ft on a somewhat windy day using an AeroTech E20-4 and Jolly Logic chute release.