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Old 02-03-2017, 09:08 PM
stefanj stefanj is offline
Master Modeler
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Hillsboro, OR
Posts: 2,847
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The Alpha was probably the first kit I built, or TRIED to build. My friends and I were able to buy motors from a couple of hobby shops, but didn't have the scratch to get rockets too. So we cobbled rocket-shaped things together and shoved motors in them. They often flew straight, surprisingly.

Eventually I mail-ordered the $2.25 "Here's a rocket, motors, and literature, go build your own launcher" outfit. I really horribly messed up gluing on the fins. I remember gluing on gauze reinforcement, having seen this in the technical manual, but that ended up making the crookedly placed fins impossible to remove. Poor first Alpha! I suppose I threw you away eventually, but your cone kicked around my parts box for a while. ( If my father had spent a an hour with me helping maybe it would have been flyable, but he was a neglectful jerk and I had to learn things on my own.)

I should build an original Alpha to commemorate the anniversary. I think eRockets has a all-balsa clone.

http://www.ninfinger.org/rockets/no...a/70est008.html
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