The Astron Sprite tumble recovers nicely, just the way it is supposed to. At least mine did. It may help to bend the little piece at the end of the hook up a little so that it is at less than 90 degrees away from the main part of the hook. But if you do, just bend it a little, otherwise the motor will miss it entirely.

Don't bend the entire lower leg in toward the midline though, because when the motor hits it the leg will act like a spring and bounce or push the motor back up into the rocket. It can also potentially vector the thrust of it is directly in the stream.

There are two ways to insure that the motor catches on the hook and doesn't kick out. One is to make sure that the long part of the hook is firmly attached to the outside of the airframe. There should be no play and no part of it should be able to pull away from the side of the tube.

The other thing is to make sure that the kick back isn't too hard. Much of the forceful kickback is simply due to the size and power of the explosion as the ejection charge is set off, and there's not much that we can do about that. Just Newton's law, that's all. It is augmented though by the rapid rise of gas pressure in front of the motor before it can escape out the vent hole, so one thing that we can do is to make sure that the gas starts venting out as soon as possible. If your Sprite is consistently kicking the motor then one thing to do might be to enlarge the vent hole slightly, or to add another one on the other side.

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SAM # 0011