What is the rocket you've had the least amount of luck with?

[Antares JS]

Estes Outlander. From three bad experiences, the dang thing will not fly without crashing unless you use an 18mm composite D. The C5 won't even work with it.

Estes Comanche-3. Just a ton of things that can go wrong on a three-stage flight and I've built four of them so far.

Estes Mini-Comanche-3. The middle airframe just refuses to separate. Even when I cut the coupler off of one it stayed on because of an accidental friction fit with the back end of the third stage motor. I've destroyed three middle stages for these.

Honorable mention to the PML Spitfire. I lost my first one along with a motor case, and my second one deployed too early and wrecked the piston, and then the chute release opened but the rubber band didn't let go and it hit the ground hard.

Mosquito. I think I've built 5 of them. One and done each and every time, no matter how small the motor. The first three, I painted high-visibility colors, and lost all of them. Fourth I painted green - I figured if the high-vis paints couldn't be found, maybe I could find a green one in the grass. Last one didn't get paint, it's gone too.

I would suggest modifying it for micro maxx and having it pop the nose with a little streamer. That really helps with visibility.

 

[Rocketjunkie]

Latest was the Deuce98. See my avatar and your 2019 Tripoli card. 5 flights, including 2 complete booster destruction.
1st flight on 2 98/7680 Rx M1100 perfect

2nd flight at NSL only 1 motor lit, never got high enough for chutes to open.

3rd flight, dealer didn't have 2nd M1419, so used one M1419 and one M1075. Up good, snapped 9/16" TN on main deployment, recovered from trees.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KiW9s4_eyk
4th flight good flight. Avatar picture on 2 M1075DM No onboard video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kzl6-aigx0k
5th flight on 2 M1790 Skidmarks. Fins failed just at burnout and booster destroyed. Have not rebuilt it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvFi8r_t17g

 

[RobertH3]

Astron Streak - the ONLY one I retrieved was the FL green and black one that used to be my avatar - that was on an A8-5 at a club launch. They come back but due to the lawn dart landing are difficult to find. To be fair to the 3 or 4 I lost as a kid, 2 were launched on C6-7's and one was launched on a "series 2" B14-7 that didn't CATO...it just went into warp haha.

 

[STXFlyer]

Starship Vega, it started with the original Estes kit and just got worse from there, Super Vega in the 80's all the way up to a 3" upscale 6 months ago. I have never flown one that came back undamaged. , something always goes wrong...

 

[Woody's Workshop]

My first rocket, a first generation Big Bertha. Every Single Launch (maybe 2 dozen) it drifted into a tree. If there was 1 tree in a 40 acre field, it would find it. Never had more than chute, shroud line or shock cord damage.
The last flight the wind was picking up but wanted to launch just one more rocket...
Off the rod, turned into the wind (almost horizontal) and headed into a pine plantation. Never found it.

Starship Vega. Very, Very Cool looking rocket. Had a terrible stability problem (and at 10 years old, I didn't know much) it went off the rod, cork screwed upward...kinda. Deployed the chute and came down on the concrete pad on the other side of the house. I shed tears when I seen the mess, and all my mom could say (yelling at that) your BLANK BLANK lucky that didn't hit my car!

Centuri, can't remember the name of the thing. Kinda looked like a P-38 Lightning.
It left the pad so darn fast I didn't see which way it went, but it wasn't straight up.
Several years later I came upon it in the Spring. Snow and weather had it flat as a pancake.
It was only about 100 yards from the pad in the intended direction I had hoped.

Alpha III for the oldest son of my Canadian Girl friend. C6-7, straight up. I used binoculars and watched it catch a thermal and it just kept going up until I couldn't see it anymore. Poor kid, he shed tears. Launch Pad, Controller, 2 engines and no rocket.

Many a rockets were lost to the trees, so many I can't even remember them all. Not that I want to.
Move forward, forget and build, build, build....

 

[CoAz2k]

The Estes Columbia (1385) when I was a kid. Broke every time I flew it, but it was a cool model and it flew well. It also has the disticntion of being the only model I had to call the power company to remove from power lines.
Review here (not mine)

About the same time, I had a Maxi Alpha 3 with plastic fins. It broke every time too. It was so heavy it gave disappointing flights on what was my first 24mm motor powered model.