Dissapointing kits? ever have one?

dr wogz said:

Sorry Andrew, jump off the wagon now. You're' too young to start spewing hate in this way. While it may seem 'trendy' / 'en vogue', make up your own mind & post your own thoughts..

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Thank you for saying what I was thinking, better than I would have.

In general the Estes bashing in this thread is excessive. Although many of the specific complaints on specific kits are valid, to generalize that all Estes kits are crap nowadays is just not true or fair.

I do agree that the multi-language instructions are frustrating, although I've had similar problems with other companies' products as well (including the one I work for).

The only one I'd say I was disappointed by is the Estes Flutter-Bye.
Not a bad kit really, but it drove me nuts having to re-attach a fin basically every flight.
There wasn't much opportunity to improve on that either, just too small of an attachment area for a flutter recovery.

Too many kits to list that fall in that category, but what I do is I'll build it stock with the pieces that come with it and fly it until it blows up or when I feel like I'll build another using upgraded parts and make it better. In most cases I tend to build some kits twice. The second time around you know all the "gotcha's"

HHaase said:

The only one I'd say I was disappointed by is the Estes Flutter-Bye.
Not a bad kit really, but it drove me nuts having to re-attach a fin basically every flight.
There wasn't much opportunity to improve on that either, just too small of an attachment area for a flutter recovery.

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Mine popped a fin off the aft end after the first or second flight. I re-attached it with epoxy and generous fillets and it's flown a bunch of times since then without coming apart. I've only every flown it on A8-3s. If it pops another fin I'll add a bit of FG to keep the fin on permanently. It's one of my favourite little flyers, pop in a motor and up it goes.

cheers - mark

dr wogz said:

Sorry Andrew, jump off the wagon now. You're' too young to start spewing hate in this way. While it may seem 'trendy' / 'en vogue', make up your own mind & post your own thoughts..


As for the China comments, yeah, I do kinda agree. But I feel Walmart is more to blame though, forcing Estes to seeks cheaper parts and suppliers, hence the 'Made in a china'. Also for making the kits "easy" (E2X, stickers vs. decals, prepared chutes, etc..) Cheap chutes especially, and the multi language instructions. Kinda cool, but the logistics of trying to kit a kit 6 times for 6 different languages, all under the same part number to ship to multi national outlets can be a real headache..

And, I had the Hornet too. Mine had proper water slide decals, but I don't remember the number of 'stripes' included.. I might have gotten one of the 1st generation kits..

Actually, I have a few of the Estes 'sticker sheets' in my 'parts box'. Hate them..

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Umm, where did I say that I hated Estes?

Thanks,

adrian said:

OK, that's worse than mine, but then mine dates back to the supposed good old days - 1993, to be exact. It was the Estes Hornet:

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At first glance, this post made me nervous. Because two of the kits in those catalogue pages are two of my all time favorites: the Estes Strikefighter and the Magnum Payloader. Two excellent kits! I bought both in the late 80’s/early 90’s and still have both of them.


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rockets said:

Umm, where did I say that I hated Estes?

Thanks,

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Post 15- it wasnt Hate - but you did call it junk.

Andy Greene said:

Post 15- it wasnt Hate - but you did call it junk.

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I was only askingif I said anything "hateful" because "dr wogz" said:
"Sorry Andrew, jump off the wagon now. You're' too young to start spewing hate in this way. While it may seem 'trendy' / 'en vogue', make up your own mind & post your own thoughts.."
_______________
So, that's why I questioned the "hate"

Thanks,

LOC V2 All though I did get my L1 with it, the instructions where junk the parts where cheap and nothing lined up. Which is sad because I probably wont buy another LOC product because of it.

Andrew,
I'm pointing out that you were / are quick to post a judgement. One that I don't feel you're quite qualified to make. You made a general statement. In this case you implied 'hate' by saying
/ calling Estes 'junk' and because of their Chinese made components.

Its easy to hate, and easy to be negative. Especially with what we see on TV these days, read in the paper, on the web, and how some people present themselves to others. Don't be a part of that. Make your own decision, voice your own opinion, make your own comments. Not because someone else (whom you might look up to) does or did, but because it's the way you feel. Be certain that's how you feel, and have the knowledge / experience to say so; to back up the comment / opinion.

Some of us have been building Estes kits since the 80's, or the 70's, or even the 60's. We've built many many kits, many from Estes, as well as from Quest, Century, Canaroc, Fliskits to name a few.. We've seen the quality (of Estes in this particular case) slowly deteriorate over the years / decades. We can say they're crud because we've seen it first hand. Can you make that claim?

That's all I'm saying.

Its OK to hate something / think something inferior (junk). But be sure you know why you have this opinion. Make sure it's based off your own personal experiences, not from others..

Gary Byrum said:

AMEN! I concur with this comment 100%. If I have a kit to build, it's usually because someone gifted it to me. I can't think of 1 (one) that I'd spend any money on these days.

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Absolutely agree!! I do admit to building some higher quality kits from MADCOW only because I don't have the tools to duplicate the components.

chrisudy said:

Estes Cosmos Mariner. Glides like a brick. A very poorly flying brick. On its best day.


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As in "Space Cowboys" the shuttle is referred to as a, "Flying Brick"...
And Clint (Movie remember) landed that flying brick without computer guidance.
Only done before in simulation (again, in the movie) by Tommy Lee Jones.
It's not so much as it's a brick, as much as it is to learn to fly, "The Brick".

Well, there was this rocket meet where a Binder Sprite was purchased with a tenth of an inch difference between the nose and body tube. A 2.5" cone doesn't work with a 2.6" body tube....

Don't confuse the Estes Mercury Redstone with the complaint of it being junk or Made in China.
". . . cheap tubing, parachutes that easily melt, and the capsule is a pain in the neck to assemble, since Estes messed up the size pieces of the capsule."

The tubing is Centuri ST-20 style and strong, made in the USA.
If wadding is correctly used and the parachutes packed properly you shouldn't have any melting.
Even so, we all get occasional melted spots on plastic sheet parachutes.

In the 1970s, the plastic molds were made in the USA for Centuri.
The three sides of the capsule will tightly snap into the ring base. Have patience and use the right pressure.
Most builders complain about the tower not fitting together. If assembled using the Centuri
instructions (from the top down, not from the bottom up) it goes together pretty easily.
Check out pages 5 and 6 at JimZs:
https://www.spacemodeling.org/jimz/ks-1.htm

The tower base inverted "Vs" do glue into the dimple holes under pressure. That's so the tower will
pop off in one piece on a hard landing, rather than break up into many pieces.

neil_w said:

I do agree that the multi-language instructions are frustrating, although I've had similar problems with other companies' products as well (including the one I work for).

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Kits have instructions?

Locksmith said:

LOC V2 All though I did get my L1 with it, the instructions where junk the parts where cheap and nothing lined up. Which is sad because I probably wont buy another LOC product because of it.

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LOC changed ownership earlier this year and I think you'll find an improved customer experience all around. My Doorknob purchase a few years back had very rough cut fin slots but the parts were top notch otherwise.

Older SIG kits kinda sucked..

Shall we mention Pica?!

I don't think I've ever been really disappointed with a kit itself. Performance, yes, but not in a kit's contents or presentation.

I believe one of the reasons is that when I started doing this stuff 45 years ago or so, ALL kits were what we would now term "builder's kits". It was somewhat expected to have to sand a nose cone shoulder to fit or add a layer of tape to a CR. The kits back then tended to be a bag (or box) of raw materials and hardware that, if the plans/directions were followed correctly would come out looking like what was on the front of the package. If you didn't care for the fin shape on your new Alpha kit you could change it because the "fins" as they came in the kit were just a sheet of wood. The instructions were, for the most part, well written and clear because they had to be (They also had more text than a current news article). Decals of any type were an added bonus. Building was a huge part of the hobby and we learned a lot of what we knew from those instructions. Most of us started scratch building pretty early on.

I'm not being critical of anyone at all, please don't read that into it, nor am I being critical of any manufacturer. I just think it is something that affects my view of kits in general. Personally, I don't care for clear backed "sticker" type decals that many kits have these days these days (Love Mark's stickers though! They look great...), but I'm not disappointed to see them fall out of the bag.

Like a lot of you guys, most of my rockets are scratch built these days, but I still like to do a kit now and then. Sometimes I even use all of the kit parts!

I guess after saying all that it would not be surprising to anyone that my favorite kits in the world these days come from Semroc!

We've had discussions on Sheri's kits previously, ...so I won't need to go there.
Gemini Titan in my case.

Nice scale subjects, high price for the rough kit materials.
The airframe material and the resin parts molds in particular.

samb said:

LOC changed ownership earlier this year and I think you'll find an improved customer experience all around. My Doorknob purchase a few years back had very rough cut fin slots but the parts were top notch otherwise.

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My loc 7.5" V-2 I got two years ago had all fin slots in the tail cone cut an an angle when viewed top to bottom, I didn't notice it till they were glued in place, they were off by a few degrees length wise, while they were consistent and it flies straight it just has pretty good roll rate on the way up.

I also had a bad experience with a black friday wildman 2.6" V-2 kit, where the metal snap ring was very poorly bent and did not fit the machined groove for motor retention correctly and i never could get it close enough that I would trust it, and the centering rings were not cut cleanly causing a lot of sanding to fit. Not that it was a deal breaker but it just soured me on the model and I never did go back and finish the kit.

One thing I absolutely hate is when something should be a 5 minute job and it winds up taking 2 hours...this is especially true with fiberglass parts that don't fit like nose cone shoulders, centering rings, or couplers, I've had a few nose cones I got from performance rocketry that fit so tight in the tubing they were designed for that I eventually wound up cutting the shoulders off and fitting a coupler that I knew fit the tubing, because sanding the shoulder down was making the shoulder so thin it wasn't sturdy. On one of them I spent two hours trying to get the cone to fit, sanding, fitting, etc and then blowing the cone out of the tube with my breath because it was such a snug fit in the tubing it was hard to pull off, and on one attempt, the cone blew out so hard that it shot accross my desk and onto the concrete floor and broke the tip off....There were some words yelled out that day, I can tell you

With the number of Low and Mid-power kit manufactures dwindling all the time I applaud any one bringing new kits on the market, we know who you are, the top men and women. With all the barriers out there it has to be a labor of love, so I will give the kit manufactures a lot of slack as long as they deliver a usable kit I can make work. Well, so much these days for highfalutin standards and loving to bitch about quality and pricing, just provide me some interesting kits. I have lived through the Das Modell - Noris kits, opening them up and saying "this is going to be fun". . . and "how much are the American's are going to HATE on these kits!" But in the end I have loved, built and flown them all. Just memories now as the kits are OOP like my SHR Mercury Redstone, Model Minutes Leduc, Hostile Projectiles winged A-4 and X 15 delta, Ouest X-30, Estes Space Ship One E, PSR 18/24 and all Roachworks and TLP kits to name a few. Considering the "idiot factor" out there it is amazing any advanced kits are made like the one's from Hostile Projectiles where the builder must make it stable and fly. I learned to use stripping tape, make witch's hats and paper fins on my TLP kits. Learned how to improvise and survive on the Noris kits. Learned many thing's on my first HPR Kit from Sherri's Hot Rockets. Many things about Sherri's kits can not be said on the Forum, but suffice it to say you send an SHR kit to a High Power Boy, he builds and flies it, he returns as a High Power Man!

Blessed are the kits that suck in one or many ways. They teach us to expand out horizons and not be spoon fed like children. We are big kids now, wearing big boy pants and not needing the warm bosom of well written instructions, bulletproof parts and guaranteed flight success. But even with that said, I still fear the Cosmos Mariner, it will surely send me running back to Mom-ma screaming for a juice box!

Blessed are the kits that suck in one or many ways. They send us to Scratchville, which can lead to the Darker Side of scratch building but still lots of fun. When you stick your hand into that burning pile of goo that used to be your best scratch built rocket, you will know what to do.

Blessed are the kits that never suck in any way, YES, the Fliskits are guaranteed to send you directly to Flistopia.