Ok, color me impressed. The level of polish on this kit, compared to my 4-29SS, is light night and day..... and I really LIKE my 4-29SS. But you can definitely see the more modern development of LOC kits in the Mega Magg. The inherent versatility is fantastic. If you're not going to worry about electronics, the kit contains everything you need except adhesive, ballast, chute protector, and paint. Let's run down what we're looking at here with a first-look review.
The nose cone is blow-molded plastic with an open end, meaning it's not sealed at the base. (thumbs up!) Molding looks quite good. Strangely difficult to pick it up with my bare hands though, I just can't get a grip due to the shape, size, and texture. Anyway, the 75mm tubes and bag of bulkheads/hardware in front of the cone are for the Removable Nose Weight System (RNWS). This is a nifty looking setup that allows you to mount and remove variable slugs of weight in the nose to achieve proper stability. I've never used it before but it looks pretty straight forward and pretty similar to what I already do on my 3" nose cones for avionics bays.... just fancier and bigger.
The airframe itself is typical high quality LOC tubing, pre-slotted, with minimal spirals to worry about. The fins are laser cut from good quality plywood of a beefy thickness to be measured later. Includes a very nice parachute, proper flat-braid shock cord, and attachment hardware too. It's a single chute, no separate drogue.... like I said, the kit is designed for motor-pop recovery. TTW build, using the Modular Motor Adapter System (MMAS). Essentially the MMAS is a 5.5" body tube inside the main tube, in place of a motor mount. You're required to plug in a motor adapter depending on what you're looking to fly. Comes standard with a single 54mm motor adapter, but plenty of other options are available as standard. You can order a custom MMAS to your own design too, which is awesome.
LOC also can swap the included MMAS if you want, for a small fee, so I did! The MMAS is the mass of tubes and swiss-cheese looking set of bulkheads on the bottom-right. Rather than the single 54mm mount, I ordered an upgrade to the cluster mount. A single 54 and a half dozen 29's. I'm likely never in my life going to fly a 7 motor cluster in this thing. What I am going to do is use those 29mm tubes as utility mounts for avionics, but they're long enough I can also probably still run motors in all 6 of them too. Never know, I may completely lose my mind. Makes me glad the RNWS is included though as I'm going to have a lot of weight in the base of this thing to counter-balance.
Now, my initial thoughts aren't 100% fawning over this fantastic kit, I do have a couple relatively minor complaints. Or more accurately, just critiques to be honest. None are serious. Mostly just informational. If you're building kits at this level of performance these things shouldn't really even slow you down much.
The one I feel is most legitimate is the slots on the airframe, they're a bit narrow for the included fins. So I'm going to be doing some sanding to get clearance for things to fit smoothly. They're not off by much, in fact they're close enough I can probably force the fins through, but with the risk of wrinkling the tube. Slightly annoying but not a big deal. Just odd. I've seen it mentioned in other builds too, so be prepared for it.
The other critique is that for the level of polish on this kit, the instructions are a bit...... basic. The RNWS instructions are comprehensive, but this is not the case for the airframe and MMAS portions. Again, if you're building kits at this level you're probably not going to be concerned, but definitely expect to spend some time staring at tubes and screws while playing 'rocket puzzle' to sort things out. There's a lot of parts and little direction on how they go together. I really shouldn't complain though. I've never even received as much as a "pointy end goes up" instruction for any of my fiberglass kits. So I should be happy LOC included any instructions at all. Just seems odd to me that they put so much effort into a phenomenal quality all-inclusive kit, and the instruction sheet for the kit itself is 5 paragraphs and 3 minimally useful photos.
Overall, what's my opinion on this kit so far? I liked LOC kits before, but this is in a completely different league. Fantastic value for the money I think, with a lot of quality parts and very little else needed to make it flyable. I already asked the Wife for a 7.5 Goblin for Christmas!
