I was reading about the Alpha 40 Project, and I thought some might find this amusing. . .
The Alpha 4 is something I invented on a whim, by bashing together an Alpha with an Alpha III kit. It uses the plastic fin cannister from the Alpha III, which I beefed up. I took some vinyl material cut from videotape slipcases and laminated it onto both side of each fin using epoxy, and then made epoxy fillets at the root. It made the fins thicker, better looking, and perfectly straight (i.e. not warped). After being finished and painted it looks almost exactly like a model made with balsa fins. There's even a slight taper in thickness from the root to the tip, which I think is neat. I also filled and concealed the joint where the plastic section connects with the body tube, put the Alpha nosecone on it, and painted the whole thing in the traditional (modern) Alpha color scheme: white body, red nose, one blue fin, and put all the Alpha stickers on it. To balance the extra fin weight, I filled the nose with parafin. The result is something that outwardly looks practically identical to a regular Alpha, but is considerably heavier and, I hope, stronger.
I've flown it once -- on a A8, if I remember right. It went surprisingly high and caused me some recovery anxiety. It's hard to track something that tiny! I want to fly it on a composite D21-7 and see if it survives. Or if I can find it afterwards, that's the real challenge.