Doug;

The John Deere is a Maxi Alpha clone. It's survived the 25 flights mainly because it's beefed up in a few places. The fins are 1/8" ply TTW, and are locked in place with 1/16" ply CRs. Overbuilt? perhaps, but I've had two mishaps that the John Deere has survived because of this construction. The first was a failed parachute deployment - rocket came in sideways (horizontal), buried itself halfway up the leading fin; no damage (paint was scratched a bit of course). The second mishap occurred when one of my trusty Rocket Vision E15s cato'ed just a few milliseconds into the launch. Split the exposed portion of the motor mount tube, but the split ended at the aft plywood centering ring (easily fixed). So while it's not the lightest rocket I've ever built, it certainly has been one of the most rugged!

The paint is Krylon, the JD decal has a bit of a story. While wondering how I was going to come up with a decal, my family and I happened to be visiting a Six Flags park in Ohio. Serendipitously, I happened to see a metal John Deere sign nailed up on the outside of one of the maintenance sheds. Happened to have my digital cameral with me, so I took a photo of the sign, trying to minimize as much parallax as possible. With my graphics software, I cut the deer image out of the photo, cleaned up the edges and then added the text with as close of font match as I could find. Printed it out with my ALPS printer on a waterslide decal sheet, and voila!

Yep, that's a Beta in the bag; trying to decide what to do with it (build or box, I mean).

I'm hoping to get down to see you guys again soon; I'll give you a heads up if things work out.

John

__________________
John
YORF #003
SAM #004