Lightly-modified Estes Der Big Red Max mid-power rocket. Vinyl Star Wars markings by Sticker Shock. Balsa fins laminated with printer paper and epoxy, trailing edges reinforced with laminated medical acetate tape. Custom internal baffle in radial pattern – we’ll see how that works out! The body tube was too short to use a standard in-line Aerotech baffle, so I drilled the motor mount tube (stolen from the Great Goblin) with radial holes and wrapped it with a stainless steel pot scrubber, then capped it with a bulkhead with forward-facing vent holes.

Ideological note here: I’ve been a modeler pretty much all my life, like since maybe seven years old, and in all that time I have found German WW2 subjects unpalatable. Because Nazis, right? Fuck those guys. But the extremely popular and legitimately cool Red Max series from Estes is all about that imagery. Skulls, Luftwaffe markers, etc. Which meant it was off-limits for me. Now… Star Wars. Come on folks, the whole Imperial design aesthetic is scraped right out of the Nazi playbook. But with the “one step removed” that science fiction provides it was okay. Kinda. Okay enough that I could make models of T.I.E. fighters. And put Storm Trooper markings on this beast. Which do look kind of cool. Now I guess I need to do a Rebel or Jedi riff on the next one.