Estes TOMCAT

Try E-Bay or Rocketry Online auctions but.............I know it is high on the cool factor, but it is very low on the function factor. I think you could have better luck getting a brick to glide. Edmond kits are easy to build and glide very well. If you are ambitious, you can find plans at JimZ's place or even on the NAR competition plans page.

HTH

-- Best regards, Mark Daughtry, SR Ignorance is bliss unless you are surrounded by it. Ignorance is like bad breath: You usually don't know you have it. NAR 71556 SR L1 MSRS Vice-President NAR Section #550 MSRS #0035 SR

Built properly it is quite an amazing flier.

I have gotten better than 25-30 glides on C6-3. but usually around 20-25 seconds.

a few times I swear I approached 40+ seconds on really good days but I did not have a stopwatch handy to check that.

it does tend to have roll stability issues. IE it will get into a bank and just never leave it.

this is usually a WEIGHT issue. IE one wing is heavier than the other.

on my second one I weighed both wings and sanded the heavier till it was the same mass as the latter. it was something like 10 grams heavier !!! this one flew a LOT better.

I build mine like tanks. TONS of CA. I think I ate up a bottle and a half of CA on each one that I built. but they could prang real nice with minor to no damage till you got the kinks out.

next time I am thinking of using thinner wood and then tissuing it. try to keep the weight about the same but up the strength.

also Do something about the pivots. they tend to wear a little. I CA hardened mine and I destroyed the model long before they failed on me.

These models are NOT bad. they take a LOT of skill and patience. FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS. they are VERY good direction. most of them fail because the user either is not skilled at trimming (very common) or they tried to take shortcuts etc.. on the assembly.

built properly and trimmed well it is an EXTREMELY satisfying model that SCREAMS please put a 24mm mount in me. if I ever get another this IS what I will do with it.

in fact the E9 might be SWEET if you build it light enough.

Many times mine would pitch over 45' on boost ROLL over and them pull up and "climb" the rest of the way. that was always the coolest way to see it boost. it also tends to loose less altitude since it already "pushing over" by the time the ejection charges fires. a few times (not many) it simply "moved" into glide without a hickup it was nearly level and the wings just "moved" and the flight continued.

VERY cool when that happens.

Check out the Orbital Engineering VMX-2 Spaceplane kit if you're after a "proper" rocket powered glider....we stock the C powered version at the moment, and have the new D version in pre-release testing....both kits look awesome and the performance is superb. Full details are on our website in the "rocket kits" section.

Hope this helps,

I expect the Tomcat to be the big demand BAR kit in 2020...

Everyone had one as a kid, and no one got it to fly right!

Bob Kaplow NAR # 18L TRA # "Impeach the TRA BoD" >>> To reply, remove the TRABoD!

Jet Red sez:

Also known as the Tom-Crash...