09-28-2017, 09:38 AM
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Master Modeler
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Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Fairbanks, Alaska
Posts: 6,507
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Originally Posted by BEC
It might be. He told me when the Estes SLV came out that it was a SPEV. The SLV uses 5 BNC-50Js....and I gather they're getting completely away from balsa nose cones.
It's funny that whenever it comes up in conversation, Bill Simon, the designer of the original SPEV, he claims he wishes everyone would forget that one....  |
His attitude toward his S.P.E.V. kit sounds like Tom Cruise's "dis-ownership" of the movie "Legend," which--considering how both the kit and the movie have become well-loved over the years--is a bit strange. The S.P.E.V. is actually two kits in one; itself, and a Thor-Agena B (which Estes always printed incorrectly as "Thor Agena-B," see: http://www.ninfinger.org/rockets/no...a/68estp16.html ), "plus extra parts."
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Originally Posted by BEC
There is also the recent packaging change to some of the Estes line that changed "skill level" to just "level" and basically redefined everything up two levels, so that RTFs and E2X/ARF types had a level number. One obvious effect of that was to make the 1225 Alpha a "Level 3" model! As I understand it, this was done with little and pretty much after-the-fact input from the folks in Penrose who know a few things about model rockets....
That project was apparently not completed, so there is a mixture of the older skill level and newer "just level" packaging out there. When that web page was created, one might wonder which level system was on the mind of the page creator.
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...So in addition to the latest iteration of the Alpha, the packaging of all of the new kits--with its "half 'n half" skill level/level nomenclature--will also be collectible (shades of the artist Pablo Picasso signing his utilities checks and other payments' checks, whose recipients never cashed them, but sold them instead, because his signature was worth more as a collectible item)... :-) |