Okay, finally a minute to collect some thoughts before getting back to work. The Mercury Redstone has always been a rocket that I wish I had in my stable. I have no idea what went wrong in my last project, but considering I got that one after doing my old Saturn V, Saturn Ib, and Little Joe II, it reminds me of the T-shirt showing the human evolving, then de-evolving into a slumping creature at the keyboard...."Somewhere, something went horribly wrong". My guess as to that would be a combination of storage rash and an attempted spray painting in freezing conditions. Not pretty. Anyway, that's the back story on how this is one of my rockets that "got away" on me.
One day recently while browsing Tower for some parts for a new RC project, I noticed an ad for this re-release. At twenty bucks, this was my chance to make things right with the Redstone. Ordering that also got me motivated to bust out my old rockets and before I knew it, I had another project or two on order, I was going through my old rockets and getting them airworthy again, and I'm back in the game. Now through a combination of scouring Craigslist for deals, searching hobby shops for hidden treasures, and going nuts with the latest Estes July 4th sale, I have a wall full of kits to work on. It's ridiculous.
What got all this started, though, was the Redstone. So after months of waiting for Tower to get the "new batch" in stock, how do I feel about it? Well, I'm not sure. I should be more excited about it, and to be honest for what amounts to a fairly basic, inexpensive representation of the booster and capsule, it really does look great. I can't wait to see it go! If it really does only get up about 200' on a C engine, then it should be a nice, slow, awesome flight to watch, without much fear of losing it. Scale rockets blasting off at Vmax are just weird to me. Before flight though, it has to get finished, and after getting the last coat of paint done yesterday, I realized I didn't want to leave the house for a week without seeing the thing finished. So I woke up at 5:00am this morning to give myself an extra hour before work to do the decals. It was a good estimate too, as the decals did take an hour to do properly. The big wrap at the top was a little intimidating, but just like with other decals, going slow and carefully massaging any wrinkiles out during positioning results in a great look. I have a couple minor areas in the paint to touch up with a brush, and clear coat is still needed to protect the decals, but overall, it's a good-looking kit.
Here's the thing, though. The instructions flat-out suck. The errors in the decals from the first batch were not corrected. The capsule and tower parts were a pain to build and in some cases didn't fit together properly. I have enough model building experience to overcome certain issues, like figuring out my own way to build the capsule assembly, and a general know-how of building LPR kits to know how certain things are supposed to go, but the basic design of this kit has been out since before I was alive and you'd think Estes would be able to clarify or resolve some of these annoyances. To me, the full scale Mercury Redstone is a subject worth modeling right, and it really wouldn't have cost Estes much to cover little details like decal placement. When a friggen Fletcher sport kit can give you detailed measurements for decal placement, you'd think the Mercury Redstone would get the same treatment to help builders achieve a proper scale look. But, no. The instructions simply state, paraphrasing here "Yeah, uh, just look at the picture on the front of the bag and make the decals look like that". You're basically left to eyeball the placement of the decals and black/white fin paint roll pattern line. All in all, a bit disappointing in the manual department.
With all that said, I'm glad I got this rocket. My goal was simply to have a rocket that anyone would recognize as a Redstone, and that will look good at the field and in flight. In filling those objectives, this kit does a great job. I really am looking forward to flying it. If you're looking for better historic accuracy, exact scale detail, or a "modern standards" build, then there are other kits to choose from that would meet the requirement. I have a feeling I won't be able to fly this until a meet that I'm hoping to attend on August 15th, but I might try to sneak out for a test flight before then. I apologize for the quality of the pictures, as they were taken with my cell phone camera at 6:30 in the morning. I'll get some better shots after my trip, with better lighting and a better camera. Of course, I'll be getting video of the maiden as well. I hope everyone else has fun with their Redstone kits and it's good to see scale making a comeback with Estes.
![V2[1].jpg](https://cdn.imagearchive.com/rocketryforum/data/attachments/190/190725-9a660875ac865e90becf3dd9cb5e540c.jpg "V2[1].jpg")
