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Originally Posted by BEC
This one has a 5/94 date on the face card. Both the face image and the actual included body tube show the short - 4 inch - body.
The face card text says the overall length is 10.6 inches - but as I mentioned before, I think the catalog pages were never changed from the original 12.6 inches as listed in the 1972 catalog.
I believe the two I have assembled also had this version of the face card.
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Thank you for posting the visual confirmations of that! I'm not surprised (but not critical of them, either, since they had--and have--so many data points to keep track of. I imagine the shorter, 10.6" long Phantoms were "SPAVs" ('Standard Parts *Awaiting* Vehicles' :-) [instead of SPEVs, "Spare Parts Elimination Vehicles"]). I actually like the aesthetics of the shorter one better than those of the 12.6" one. I suppose it might even--if one wanted to fly one--be stable without ballast in the nose cone, especially if it used 1/2A or A motors, of 13 mm mini motors in a split plastic 13 mm/18 mm adapter. Also:
William Shatner, between about the 7:56 and 8:36 points *here* (in "Model Rocketry: The Last Frontier," see:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIXdx_uUhqA [and here are other links to the film:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_uj71DyTL0 and <in two parts,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqupfFjSJXw &
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISZKIf_2Plw >]), showed and described two Phantom-like rockets. The first one looked like the original BT-20 size one (he and the kids static fired a motor in it), and the other one looked like the current type, except that it appeared to have balsa Alpha fins glued (epoxied or CA'ed, maybe?) onto its BT-50 size clear plastic body tube, and:
Especially on grass, the 10.6" Phantom might make a good low-powered break-apart recovery model. It could use a sufficiently-long, half-width streamer (like the Estes Star Trooper's Day-Glo orange one), and a metallized Mylar version would flash in the Sunlight.