Officer Nice
Member
- Joined
- Mar 30, 2003
- Messages
- 8
- Reaction score
- 0
I have built 3 BSD kits. A 54 Special, the L3 5.5 Horizon, and now again, another 54 Special for testing EX motors.
Its hard to point out the best part of these kits, but Ill list them anyway.
1. The instructions are excellent, printed on what I assume is a laser printer. Crisp and detailed, something other manufacturers should heed and emulate.
2. They are light, well designed, and although all paper tube construction, with the doubled tubes can perform with the best of the expensive fiberglass models, without being brittle, and costly as PML tubes seem to be.
3. Another plus is you have to cut your own fin slots, which at first seemed a minus, but when your kit flys straight and true, the little amount of effort to do this becomes greatly rewarding. In fact, on my second 54 Special, I had cut the tube with fin slots in less than 10 minutes. The included fin alignment sheet although requiring some builders skill, made them as perfect as you need. My 1st 54 Special on a J275 flew straight as an arrow with my limited skill and hacking out the slots! ( see rewarding, mentioned above.)
4. Customer Support. Mark Saunders I believe is the relatively new owner of the BSD Scott Binder designed kits, and he provided excellent support; whether it be questions, addition parts, (yeah, I made a newbie mistake and needed a new coupler!) timely email feedback, etc
5. They look and fly fantastic! (for very competitive prices.)
6. Cool vinyl graphics are standard on each kit. I usually spend $10 for vinyl lettering on all my scratch build rockets. Each BSD kit so far has included 2 full sheets of perfectly cut vinyl graphics that look terrific. To have them made yourself would be way over $20 easily.
As far as what I didnt like about BSD kits, for personal reasons only is I HAD to change the recovery harness included. I just cant put up kits that fly on J+ power and up easily and not use tubular nylon. If you use your nomex cord protectors, it would pry never be a problem on the stock cords, and pry save weight while increasing performance. Still, I just cant do without over the top strong recovery.
Granted, the reason these kits are so reasonably priced, as BSD assumes you have your own chutes as well, its understandable a tubular nylon recovery harness isnt another expensive inclusion. ( Most of us quick swap these items anyway, so Im not even sure thats much of a minus considering the kit prices.)
Anyway, the L3 Horizon went to over 9,000 ft agl on a L850 and it performed flawless. People demand fiberglass when you get into L and M motors, but epoxy soaked couplers as reinforcment in paper tubes have me sold.
I highly recommend these kits. Im just waiting to buy the other kits in Scott Binders, um I mean, BSD's well design fleet.
Its hard to point out the best part of these kits, but Ill list them anyway.
1. The instructions are excellent, printed on what I assume is a laser printer. Crisp and detailed, something other manufacturers should heed and emulate.
2. They are light, well designed, and although all paper tube construction, with the doubled tubes can perform with the best of the expensive fiberglass models, without being brittle, and costly as PML tubes seem to be.
3. Another plus is you have to cut your own fin slots, which at first seemed a minus, but when your kit flys straight and true, the little amount of effort to do this becomes greatly rewarding. In fact, on my second 54 Special, I had cut the tube with fin slots in less than 10 minutes. The included fin alignment sheet although requiring some builders skill, made them as perfect as you need. My 1st 54 Special on a J275 flew straight as an arrow with my limited skill and hacking out the slots! ( see rewarding, mentioned above.)
4. Customer Support. Mark Saunders I believe is the relatively new owner of the BSD Scott Binder designed kits, and he provided excellent support; whether it be questions, addition parts, (yeah, I made a newbie mistake and needed a new coupler!) timely email feedback, etc
5. They look and fly fantastic! (for very competitive prices.)
6. Cool vinyl graphics are standard on each kit. I usually spend $10 for vinyl lettering on all my scratch build rockets. Each BSD kit so far has included 2 full sheets of perfectly cut vinyl graphics that look terrific. To have them made yourself would be way over $20 easily.
As far as what I didnt like about BSD kits, for personal reasons only is I HAD to change the recovery harness included. I just cant put up kits that fly on J+ power and up easily and not use tubular nylon. If you use your nomex cord protectors, it would pry never be a problem on the stock cords, and pry save weight while increasing performance. Still, I just cant do without over the top strong recovery.
Granted, the reason these kits are so reasonably priced, as BSD assumes you have your own chutes as well, its understandable a tubular nylon recovery harness isnt another expensive inclusion. ( Most of us quick swap these items anyway, so Im not even sure thats much of a minus considering the kit prices.)
Anyway, the L3 Horizon went to over 9,000 ft agl on a L850 and it performed flawless. People demand fiberglass when you get into L and M motors, but epoxy soaked couplers as reinforcment in paper tubes have me sold.
I highly recommend these kits. Im just waiting to buy the other kits in Scott Binders, um I mean, BSD's well design fleet.
