A company must stay in business to serve our needs. I can't blame Tunick for going after Wallmart and others high volume customers. But they could have also kept a low volume line for the long term folks like us, which would kept more people in the hobby. If the new management keeps the toy mindset, I don't think we have lost a thing, but there is the potential of bringing back the real rocket lines.

Edit: Remember we used to have Centuri, AVI ,Cox, Rocket Development Systems, FSI and Semroc making motors in the '70s - Estes is the only one to survive ! I'll bet Carl could not have rejuvenated Semroc if there was no Estes to make motors, and would Quest have come along if the Estes market had gone?

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Dale Greene

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" Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act. " George Orwell

And it occurred to me at lunch time that maybe one reason Hobbico bought Estes was to have a pipeline into WalMart.....

Time will tell.

added: If they do keep that pipeline open one can hope that they put products into WalMart that actually work together (no more Moon Mutts and nothing but A10-3T minis, and no more Taser Twins with no boosters, to cite two recent examples). It would be best, as an intro to the hobby, if one could buy all they needed at to get those first satisfying flights at WalMart without loosing a rocket on its first flight or being unable to fly it at all without figuring out what was needed and finding it somewhere else. One can hope, anyway.

Agreed. I REALLY hope Hobbico is successful in keeping Estes rockets available in Walmart. Having model rockets available on the shelves of the world's largest retailer is the best exposure the hobby can have. Having Estes rockets available in Walmart certifies to lots of folks that this is a mainstream, safe hobby, not simply an activity for terrorist wannabes.

As for Estes having been "run into a ditch" by the previous ownership, I couldn't disagree more. The company is still vibrant, and much larger (from what I understand) than when Mr. Tunick took it over. In addition to keeping model rockets in front of the masses, Estes managed to keep 27 varieties of engines on the shelves. Contrast this to the heyday of 1969 when Estes sold 35 varieties, half of which were A motors and 6 of which were simply different lengthed versions of other motors of the same impulse. I hope 19 years from now Estes is still producing at least 27 different motors in 5 impulse classes.

I am grateful to see a hobby company buy Estes. And I'm grateful to the prior owners for all they did to grow Estes, and the hobby.

Interesting...in addition to this article's information on Hobbico's purchase of Estes, I didn't know that Revell is a subsidiary of Hobbico. I wonder if any product development "cross-fertilization" might occur between Estes and Revell? Last week I had an unusually vivid dream along those lines:

I bought and built a Revell model of the U.S. Army MGM-52 Lance short-range liquid-propellant ballistic missile. It was a 0.75" diameter plastic model kit that could be built either as a display model or as a flying model rocket that used 13 mm mini motors. The parts were on plastic "trees" and were molded in Army green (olive drab) styrene.

The body tube was molded in halves, and the short conical boat-tail was molded in one piece and was glued into the rear end of the assembled body tube before the one-piece fins were glued on. The kit included the large and small Lance fins (used for the conventional and nuclear-armed versions of the missile). The two short (about 3/8" long) launch luglets were molded into one of the body tube halves.

Molded-in longitudinal flanges inside the body tube halves held the model rocket motor in place. A radially-ribbed plastic disc that included a molded-in thrust ring was glued into an internal circumferential groove as the body tube halves were glued together. The motor was retained with a plastic twist-lock retainer ring.

The shock cord anchor was Cox-style (it was a small "omega"-shaped open loop of stiff steel wire). Its ends fit into molded-in holders located about 0.75" back from the front edge of the body tube. One holder was on each half of the body tube, and the wire anchor's ends were slipped into the holders when the body tube halves were glued together. The shock cord was 1/8" wide flat fabric/elastic, and I was rather surprised that it was of adequate length (about 20" long).

The nose cone was in three pieces--left and right rear halves that included a rectangular shock cord eyelet, and the one-piece tip that was about one-third the total length of the assembled nose cone. The kit's decals were the water-transfer type, and included operational U.S. Army markings as well as black roll pattern decals to depict a Lance test round.

I didn't get a chance to apply the decals or fly it before my alarm clock went off, but it went together easily using liquid plastic cement and the assembled model was a high-fidelity replica, having molded panel lines and screw heads on its body and fins. I just hope this dream was a pre-cognitive one...

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I've been a Tower Hobbies customer (not terribly active, but enough to stay on their paper and e-mail lists) for a long time. This morning in my in box was a new kind of sale e-mail which points me to www.rocketfun.com, which I'd not heard of before.

That was fast......

It's interesting that they have Estes Ds and Aerotech Fs, but no Estes Es. Hopefully they're just still getting things put into place.

Rocketfun has been a link on their website for several years now down in the "other hobby sites" section. I've ordered several motors from them along with building supplies and other stuff that has always been in the Tower side.

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Ah - I guess I've just not been very observant then. It IS the first time I've ever gotten any email pointing me there. I get the airplane mailings and occasional RC car mailings all the time.

Perhaps it is simply because I was browsing motors a few days ago at Tower, rather than anything from yesterday's announcement.

I too though it odd they had no Es (of any sort). I agree I hope it's just a stock-on-hand sort of thing.

The tower rocket website isn't that new. It been around for a while.

They might only sell motors that can be shipped non Hazmat.