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Old 08-08-2017, 09:46 PM
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BEC BEC is offline
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That's about right - whenever the Alpha first appeared packaged as part of the "Beta series". These first appeared in the 1993 catalog. All the Beta series Alpha examples I have acquired have the slimmer nose cone - first made in the US, then later (beginning 2000) made in China.

This is also when the Alpha got the motor hook with the finger tab - in the initial Beta series version.

Initially these had the red/blue livery in waterslide but that transitioned to stickers in the late 1990s. This was before first the parachutes and then the whole kits went to China.

We need someone who was at Estes in 1988 or so - who was involved in the 1989 catalog production perhaps - where this whole notion of different colors of nose cones first appeared - to tell us what drove them to do the Alpha III nose cones for a time. I asked Bill Simon about it, but he'd been gone from Estes for some time by then.
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