CTRockets,
Welcome to TRF! We are glad you chose to jump into the fun here, but now you have to keep coming back!
You may not understand yet but the Estes Alpha was/is really about 29 slightly different kits. They were all called 'Alpha' but there were teeny differences.
This little gem of a kit has a long history at Estes, and just might rank among the top ten low-power kits of all time. Easy construction, clean lines, very good performance, and lots of other great attributes.
Over the years, Estes changed the nose cone shape, the nose cone material, the fin material, the parachute, the color of the body tube, the color of the nose cone, the color of the plastic fins....you get the idea. The nose cone shape alone has probably been tweaked about a dozen times (sharp tip, round tip, ogive, near-ogive, etc). Somewhere in the middle of the stream there used to be a particular combination that Estes called the Alpha II (I don't know where/how/why they decided it was time for a 'II'). They were all essentially the same, but some of the features (plastic nose cones, plastic fin units) were probably kept to make this rocket kit a bit more beginner-friendly.
You can tie on a parachute, clip on a streamer, or leave them both off and use 'nose-blow' recovery (the NC remains attached by the shock cord, the rocket breaks apart and tumbles down). The Alpha is very flexible.
One of our rocketry historians can probably count off the details of the exact year, the variations in components, and all the rest. You ask a great question, one that goes almost all the way back to the start of model rocketry.
