Brief:
A polystryrene rework of Holverson design's Zoomie. It is a neat little glider that was spoiled by replacing balsa wood with cheap foam.

I first saw one of the Fun Rocket versions of the glider about two years ago, when a friend bought one for £3. It was the first rocket glider that I had ever seen and I've been hooked ever since.

Construction:
Components consist of:

• A prebuilt zoomie
• Decal sheets
• Nose weight (clay)
• Instruction sheet

As the Zoomie is prebuilt, the instructions are mainly about trimming. Trimming the Zoomie is an easy affair as the instructions are straightforward and I've run model rocket workshops where 10 year olds have trimmed a Zoomie for flight in under 5 minutes and had 3 or 4 flight apiece that were good.

The instructions give the point of balance too. I've trimmed several Zoomies now and as a general rule the best way of trimming is to ignore the instructions, go outside and throw the zoomie around, and adding nose weight until you are happy. Most Zoomies require only a tiny amount of clay.

Finishing:
The instructions show how to finish the Zoomie with a felt tip marker, but I would not bother. The foam is cheap and the surface is pitted, however, it is reasonable pretty. Decals can be added, although I would not stick them to the body tube as they can peel off after a few flights.

Construction Rating: 3 out of 5

Flight:
The recommended motor for this glider is a 1/4A3-3T only. I've had dozens of flights with this glider but I have not used this motor once! Most flights I've had have been with a 1/2A3-2T or A10-3T.

The Zoomie leaves the pad very, very quickly. She's supposed to boost straight, loop after burn out, and then at ejection she should settle into a glide. In reality, each flight does it a little differently, and that is what makes this a good glider to start with. On the higher powered motor (A10-3T), she loops almost immediately with the motor ejection about 40 feet off the ground. I've seen a Zoomie settle into a steady glide at 80 feet and just hang there in a slight breeze. I've also seen one loop 360° and eject the motor at head height!

Recovery:
The recovery is always different, however, there are two drawbacks to the rocket.

First, the nose cone is not always fixed in strongly, and on two separate occasions on two fifferent zoomies, I've seen the nose cone be blown out. No real damage and it's easy to fix provided you find the nose cone.

The boost phase can cause a slight melt of the Zoomies wings. This does not affect the Zoomie too much, but now I always add a bit of aluminium tape to the trailing edges.

A tiny amount of clay can be added to one tip to bring the glider around in flight. On a 1/23-2T motor, the Zoomie can glide a 100 meters or so.

Flight Rating: 4 out of 5

Summary:
It's not the best glider in the world, but as a quick and safe introduction to the world of rocket gliding, this is a good place to start. It's where I started.

Overall Rating: 3 ½ out of 5

Brief:
This is an Almost-Ready-to-Fly glider using 13mm mini engines. The Zoomie is a simple "kit" that arrives already assembled. I am aware through EMRR that at least some of these rockets were sold as kits that had to be assembled. Mine was not one of those. The only real construction is the addition of the decals and the addition of clay to trim for gliding. It is ostensibly a skill level 1 kit but in reality is comparable to an Estes RTF. Trimming is the only real work involved. I bought this rocket for 2 reasons. I had never seen it before and understood that the company was gone so I was not likely to see it again was the "real" first reason. The second is that I have had uniformly bad luck with all gliders. This looked like a reasonable place to start improving my skills.

Construction:
The box contains:

• 1 prepainted rocket consisting of:
  • BT-5 tube
  • nosecone
  • launch lug
  • styrofoam wings
• Tabloid size (11x17) instruction sheet printed on one side
• 1 crack and peel sticker sheet
• 1 bag of clay for trimming

Read the description above a bit more closely. There is no construction. It's done.

Finishing:
The foam wings and balsa nosecone are already pained red. The BT and launch lug are white. The only real finishing is in the application of the stickers.

The stickers improve the appearance of this rocket dramatically but have a few problems. The instruction say merely to see the box illustration for placement. This works for most of them and most of the rest can be inferred but there is an insect logo which is nowhere shown. By the time I had applied the others, there was no real place to put it since the red of the insect would be swallowed by the red of the wings. I decided to place in at the back of the BT and let it overlap the windows along either side by a bit.

Another problem is in the size of the peel and sticks. The "HD" logo is supposed to be mounted on the wing canards. One fit fine and the other one did not without some trimming.

My biggest gripe, though, is with the stiffness of the stickers. That, coupled with the large margins, made application to curved surfaces particularly difficult. The forward windshield was difficult since the sticker will curve in one direction but not another. The NC is an ogive and the sticker wants to neither stay down nor even fit well when pressed down. Some trimming with a razor knife helped but did not solve the problem.

I know that it is considered traditional leave gliders unfinished but I did not do that. I figured that the only hope the stickers had of surviving a flights was to be set with some Future. I also hoped that the Future would help to protect the surfaces from dings. Accordingly, I applied 2 coats and hoped that I would still be able to trim it.

Construction Rating: 3 ½ out of 5

Flight:
The only recommended motor is the Estes 1/4A3-3T. The rocket needs no wadding so the igniter and plug were inserted, the rocket was put on the rod and the whole thing was hooked up. It launched without a problem.

I have had terrible luck with gliders and did not do well with this one either but it did do better than normal. It went up straight, not too high, but high enough to be worthwhile. The motor ejected and the rocket began to claw its way to the ground. It actually glided a little bit. It also tumbled some. It was sort of an aerodynamic tumble. I will retrim and try again but RSO duties prevented me getting another shot at it today.

Flight Rating: 3 out of 5

Summary:
It was more dependable than any other glider I have tried but that's not saying much. The only recommended motor is a 1/4A3-3. I think it could handle a 1/2A or maybe even a full A. It did not go all that high.

Overall Rating: 3 out of 5