It's Worth Repeating... The Estes Bring Back Wishlist...

The Rocketry Forum

Help Support The Rocketry Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Scott_650 makes some good points about the PSII kits, Although I am a big fan of the Leviathan.
Last year I purchased the BMS 29mm 34" School Rocket. It flies well on an E30-4. I purchased the optional payload bay but I have yet to fly with it. Dollar for dollar, the BMS 29mm 34" School Rocket is a great deal.
The inner diameter of the 3" School Rocket BT is the same as the Estes 3" BT.
 
The Orion Starfighter and Torellian Invader. I wanted them back in the day and never got them.
The Astron Avenger. My first two stage rocket and I still really like the lines
The Space Shuttle full stack.
Saturn V Apollo. I know there's an RTF and a Skylab, but a kit that lets you build Apollo 11 should _never_ be out of print.

But by far the #1 thing to bring back: That back page of the catalog where you could buy individual G### D### nose cones and stuff for scratch building.
 
Agreed the PSII stuff is not really "Pro Series." It has some of the trappings of more serious MPR and HPR like TTW fins, but it's still lightly constructed for BP motors and simple motor eject recovery at low altitudes. I am going to bash one into something else, but I'm basically starting with a used/crashed nose cone and bought some body tubes and couplers on their Cyber Monday sale. All the rest will not be stuff Estes does well or at all.

I think their best stuff is BT-80 and smaller.
 
BMS uses a fairly lightweight body tube - my two plywood ring/balsa fin 24mm “base” models aren’t terribly heavy, they fly nicely on Estes E12s though Aerotech S/U Fs are the perfect motors. I can’t recall the weight off hand and Thrustcurve is offline - I’ll weigh them and update when I get a chance to go downstairs to the shop…

Edited

My 3” School Rocket, no extension or payload bay, plywood rings, papered balsa fins, no chute installed, Estes threaded engine retainer and with my typical fairly heavy paint job weighs exactly 10 ounces.
The BMS body tube is exactly the same airframe as Estes uses (I have both BMS tubing and an unbuilt Leviathan and a Scion), if not its so close that telling the difference is very difficult. The T300 airframe is compatible with the Estes parts and couplers and the BMS parts and couplers are compatable with the Estes airframe.
 
Agreed the PSII stuff is not really "Pro Series." It has some of the trappings of more serious MPR and HPR like TTW fins, but it's still lightly constructed for BP motors and simple motor eject recovery at low altitudes. I am going to bash one into something else, but I'm basically starting with a used/crashed nose cone and bought some body tubes and couplers on their Cyber Monday sale. All the rest will not be stuff Estes does well or at all.

I think their best stuff is BT-80 and smaller.
There’s been more BT-80 based kits than BT-70 ones. Why is it that Estes hasn’t had very many B-70 based kits? Seems like it would be the other way around.
 
I'd love to see the Snitch back in the line-up. It is/was great for school demonstrations. I used several of them for years and I only have like one left. I keep regluing them together, but eventually they become unflyable.

And as long as we're dreaming how about the same scale Snitch for every motor size that Estes makes, 13, 18, 24, and 29, and of course I'd love to see it in 38 and 54 but now I know that I'm really dreaming.

Crazy, I know, but hey you all asked.

Brad
 
More than bringing things back, I wish they would stop discontinuing the dang things in the first place. I think they should bring the Citation Patriot and Goblin back. Also the Colossus with a 29mm motor mount.
 
Most of the Sci-Fi Offerings from 80-84. Definitely the Starfighter Combo and The Space Pirates; Excalibur and Dragon 7. I have put together a list of about 15-20 from that time span that I am going to scratch build. Just over half have the fins or decals available, but I will have to produce the second half myself as I go along.
 
So many want the old Estes Sapce Shiuttle lkit, the 1/162 kit#1284 with the hard to build vac-formed orbiter, that was a PITA to try to trim to glide (I saw very few glide. I saw many others tumble or spiral in, and some shuttles that aimply pitched badly and crashed on launch).

AIM HIGHER. NOT a bring-back of waht IMHO was an undersized bad flyig crappy kit. Go for a bigger better kit that could fly well. Like the 1/110 shuttle I've made in 1979 and again in 2008 as a possible kit. Estes already makes the correct tube sizes, 3" for ET, and BT-55 SRB's. Flies NICE on a D12-3.

Indeed, the 1979 model at 1/110 scale was my first shuttle stack (with ET & boosters). The Estes kit was just too small for me to have any interest in it. Then when I saw others flying them, I decided to make one of a size that was more reasonable (50% bigger) and that would fly well. Later, someone gave me what was left of one they built (that crashed or they got tired of fixing it), which I repaired just enough to use with a fan and crude "wind tunnel" to find out some pitch stability effects for boost. Also I've seen the instuctions and an opened kit so I know exactly what it was like.

Here's a thread on the 2008 1/110 model, which uses a styrofoam orbiter: https://www.rocketryforum.com/threads/1-110-scale-shuttle-model-is-a-success.8053/

Here's a pic of it, for relative size.
264715-00fcab36ad99ac558280701fccbf3cac.data


Here's a video, camera started after ejection:


I know some would want 1/100, to go with other kits of that scale. But it would require new tubes, but more importantly significantly more mass and drag, so it would require an E to fly decent, and the price woudl be significantly higher too.

The sweet spot is 1/110 for a nice flying not crazy expensive kit. 90% or more of the "kit building" market is for FLYING models, to fly, at a launch, not static models to look at. It's sometimes too limiting to go for a certain scale, 1/100 is wimpy for a Little Joe-II (which was a bit small for a 18mm engine, and a bit underpowered on a 13mm engine). The Centuri (then later Estes) 1/45 (a scale no other kit has used) was perfectly sized for a nice looking nice flying model using D power or above.

Same goes for the old twin engine BT-70 Gemini Titan, with the horrible balsa Gemini capsule you had to carve the windows out of, incredibly hard to get to look half close to "right". And the pieces of clear plastic that were a PITA to try to glue together to make the slip-on fin unit. And yes, I did have that kit, and yes mine sucked.

Hell no, not a clone of THAT thing in these modern times. I do not quibble about the scale, or even the twin engines, but have massive problems with the thought of THAT mess of a kit to be "Brought Back" the same like it was back then, with no molded Gemini, and the same old "lotsa luck, sucker" clear fin assembly.

So, anyway, be careful what you ask for. A crappy old kit might have some "fond memories" that were either maybe not so nice at the time, or others had no fond memories at all of theirs that failed or were so hard to build.
 
I wish ESTES still had the NCR contract to bring back the 4" SA-14 Archer and the 2.6" Interceptor G
Current NCR owner Matt Steele has talked about bringing back some of the classic North Coast 4” designs - including one of my much desired kits, the Quasar - so maybe we’ll see the big Archer someday.

Will NCR ever partner with Estes again? Maybe, with the Langford family in charge, though probably not - Matt has said that he pretty much builds the rockets he and his friends want rather than aiming at the “mass market”.
 
Simple, 3FNC classics like
Bandit (1248)
Renegade (1271)
Cherokee-D (1247)
Maxi Alpha (1291)

Designer Series:
One of the early designs by Bill Simon - got some more 3FNC there, but a clustered kit (Cobra) or a staged kit (Apogee II) would be interesting.

Scale kit bring-backs like:
Sandhawk (1251)
Maxi-Brute V-2
improved version of the Gemini Titan
Mercury Atlas

No recommendations on sci-fi / fantasy kits because Estes seems to me pretty heavy on those right now, which is a good thing.
 
You know, as part of a bring back campaign, I wish they would sell just the waterslide decal sheets, professionally produced to match originals, for a reasonable fee. I can clone something out of production for the most part, but with the loss of the ALPS printers, for many models it's hard to do justice to the decals.
This would also be good from a marketing perspective. After a year, Estes would have data on which OOP models the buyers were interested in, to guide decisions on which to bring back as full kits. Obviously it wouldn't factor in models that require special molded plastics which can't be easily cloned, but it would be a good indicator nonetheless.
 
This would also be good from a marketing perspective. After a year, Estes would have data on which OOP models the buyers were interested in, to guide decisions on which to bring back as full kits.

Sell decals to find out what OOP kits to produce? Why on Earth would they need to do that when there are about a buh-zillion threads like these stretching back to the rec.models.rockets days? It's not like what this crowd likes is some big secret.
 
More than bringing things back, I wish they would stop discontinuing the dang things in the first place. I think they should bring the Citation Patriot and Goblin back. Also the Colossus with a 29mm motor mount.

AC Supply still has Citation Patriot and Goblin kits in stock at great prices. I got two of each from the brown truck yesterday.

Simple, 3FNC classics like
Bandit (1248)
Renegade (1271)
Cherokee-D (1247)
Maxi Alpha (1291)

I have parts incoming to build a BT-80 Alpha.

What is the difference between the Cherokee-D and the Cherokee-E that's hanging on a peg for $14.99 at my local Hobby Lobby other than a motor mount an inch longer?
 
I have parts incoming to build a BT-80 Alpha.

What is the difference between the Cherokee-D and the Cherokee-E that's hanging on a peg for $14.99 at my local Hobby Lobby other than a motor mount an inch longer?

I'm building a Maxi Alpha too, but with a 29mm mount to make a Rip-SNOAR-tin Maxi Alpha. :)

You have to ask what the difference is between the oh-so-classic Cherokee-D, with all of it's groovy red decals, and the longer, blue-decal Cherokee-E? :rolleyes:
 
AC Supply still has Citation Patriot and Goblin kits in stock at great prices. I got two of each from the brown truck yesterday.



I have parts incoming to build a BT-80 Alpha.

What is the difference between the Cherokee-D and the Cherokee-E that's hanging on a peg for $14.99 at my local Hobby Lobby other than a motor mount an inch longer?
An extra piece of airframe and a coupler, for stability. Estes says to mount the MMT in that short piece of airframe, aft end of the rocket. Most rocketnutz including me who've built it seem to have used it as a payload section.
 
An extra piece of airframe and a coupler, for stability. Estes says to mount the MMT in that short piece of airframe, aft end of the rocket. Most rocketnutz including me who've built it seem to have used it as a payload section.

My Cyber Monday buy included some BT-55s and the NC-55 kit, which has two of the Cherokee-E nose cones in it. My build list includes something with more standard clipped-delta fins, but who knows what will become of the other cone?

If I built the Estes kit, I'd definitely use the extra coupler as a payload section, or maybe just leave it out and shorten the thing up for better performance.

One common theme is Estes designs just about every kit for sub-optimal performance. Don't want those rockets going too high and getting away from people!
 
An extra piece of airframe and a coupler, for stability. Estes says to mount the MMT in that short piece of airframe, aft end of the rocket. Most rocketnutz including me who've built it seem to have used it as a payload section.
I throw the original tubes and couplers into my parts box and use a proper length section of BMS airframe tubing.
 
Estes Shadow and X-Ray.

I liked the look of the X-Ray with it's wide clear payload bay. And the Shadow isn't anything noteworthy except that I used to have one as a kid and really enjoyed launching it.

If I ever get around to upscaling anything for more medium to high power fun, those two are at the top of the list.
 
AIM HIGHER. NOT a bring-back of waht IMHO was an undersized bad flyig crappy kit.
As one of the people asking for a space shuttle bring-back, I basically agree. A crappy shuttle kit is still better than no shuttle kit. I'd be happier if they improved it.

I don't buy into the idea that size is the problem, though. A BT60 based 1:200 scale kit would be good it it's done well, or a 1:150 BT70 kit. I never understood where the 1:162 scale came from, it doesn't really make any of the parts an obviously good size.
 
Gemini Titan K-21 but in BT-80
Super Vega
Maxi-Brute HoJo
Goony's BT-60, BT-80 or both
Not that I'm complaining, I think they are doing a pretty good job at re-releasing and new stuff
 
Back
Top