Team, I gave the Stryker AGM kit a try and wanted to share my build experience with you.

It was... WEIRD. The design is a little complicated - there's a reducer that fits aft, and the fins are compound-attached to the reducer and body tube. The engine mount and shock-cord arrangement are like High-Power stuff, where the cord is a kevlar affair attached to the mount, vs. Estes' goofy "fold-n'-glue" thing on the inside of the tube. The nose cone, a clear derivative of a scale "Honest John" cone, was poorly formed, and had to be aggressively sanded and compounded in order not to look like it had been hand-whittled out of broken egg-shells by chimpanzees with hatchets.

Construction was a chore - there's a lot of lumber on this kit, and I feel compelled to attach everything these days with epoxy, making beautiful fillets, hand-airfoiling all eight fins, etc. The sanding of the large aft fins was especially tricky, due to the body-side profile having three angles. The steep rake of the fins made the leading and trailing edge-bevels difficult to make without changing the length of the fins. Lastly, I admit to one serious build error - the fins went on the rocket crooked, because I used an experimental method of fin-mounting that I wasn't experienced with, and because the tail cone wasn't particularly centered with the body tube (cheap manufacturing).

Painting took a long time, as there was a ton of masking to do.

By boltstop at 2012-02-25

One odd problem that almost caused me to throw out the rocket - the tube kept warping! After a particularly heavy paint application session, I'd pick up the rocket and notice it was badly warped. 20 hours later and it would be straight as an arrow!

I let the rocket cure in the sun today after applying decals and clear coat, and it warped again. 45 minutes in the shade and it was straight.

The Maiden Flight

I had not fully assembled my launch pad until today, and wasn't able to take advantage of my calm winds that stayed in place until 2:00 p.m. MST. I got one flight in during a lull right at the beginning of a microburst on a B6-4. This 27", 3.1 oz (87 gram) rocket had a fairly low flight (maybe 180' - 220'), and despite the slightly cock-eyed fins, was arrow straight, with no wind-cocking. Ejection was just past apogee with a curious deployment. The parachute came out and unraveled, deploying perfectly, but no wadding was ejected from the rocket. Upon landing, I discovered the wadding still in the tube; the gases apparently wound their way around the wadding, cooling enough (like a baffle, I'd guess) not to damage the chute in any identifiable way.

Why would the wadding stay in the rocket like that?