Brief:
I got started in rocketry with a group of kids from my old neighborhood in the summer of 1977. I had picked an Estes Beta as my first kit, but one of my friends who had managed to get to the J.C. Penney Toyland before I did and he got the one and only Estes Rogue kit that they had in stock. (He pronounced it Rouge, no matter how many times we corrected him.) I liked the Beta but always secretly wished I had eaten a little faster and beaten him to Penney's that night. Twenty-four years later, I was thinking of doing some scratchbuilding and bought a PNC-55 assortment and some BT-55 body tubes. While I was initially unsure of exactly what I was going to build, I was thrilled to find the pointed cones that would allow me to build close copies of two old favorites, a 1.36:1 Satellite Interceptor and a 1.78:1 Rogue.

Construction:
The parts list:

• BT-55 15.5" length
• BT-50 engine tube 3.0" length
• PNC-55BB
• 1/8" balsa fin stock
• 24 mm engine hook
• CR-2050 engine block
• 2 CR-5055
• 36" length 1/8" sewing elastic shock cord
• 18" Estes parachute
• large snap swivel
• launch lug
• decal

Nothing about the original Rogue's construction was remotely difficult to anyone with even minimal building experience, so I expected pretty much the same from the upscale. It's basically a 4FNC rocket in it's original BT-20 incarnation, and it scaled up easily to the BT-55 version with the help of a copier that could properly size the fin pattern 178%. Since this rocket was built in my BAR infancy, I glued in the 24mm motor mount without any idea of the potential for using a length of Kevlar® as an attachment for the shock cord. The shock cord, which was made from 1/8" sewing elastic, was glued in up at the front of the body tube using the only method I knew of in the spring of 2001, a traditional Estes tri-fold mount.

Finishing:
While my recovery systems weren't yet state of the art, I had discovered the miracle of using thinned Elmer's Fill 'n' Finish to rid my clone of the horrors of tube spirals and exposed balsa grain. I used 1/8" balsa for the fins, which may have been overkill on my part, but after several sessions with the Fill 'n' Finish and sandpaper, the fins looked as if they were cut from glass. I wasn't the only one who noticed how nice the fins looked as several others have commented on it over the years. Unfortunately I've never been able to duplicate the effect on subsequent projects.

As for the painting process, the most difficult part of that was figuring out what color was an acceptable substitute for "International Orange". I couldn't find anything that might point me in the right direction on that problem, so I substituted "Sunburst", a Colors By Boyd color originally meant for (and used for) a Winston Cup stock car in a previous hobby. As I later discovered, "Sunburst" and International Orange were pretty close to the same color. The bottom section of the rocket including the fins, was painted "Sunburst", while plain old Valspar gloss white and black were used on the middle and top sections respectively. Since I hadn't delved into the mysteries and wonders of decal making at the time, I had to do without and depended on the shape and paint of the rocket to provide everyone with clues as to it's identity. Still, the question I was invariably asked on the several occasions when I was stopped and complimented on the rocket while walking to the pad was "Where are the decals?" (as if decal making was something that any moron could do.) Well, I decided that I was not just any moron, and threw myself into the project. After many misses, near and far, I finally figured out how to resize the decal scan using Microsoft Photo Editor. It doesn't allow me to clean up the images, but it does allow them to size properly.

Flight:
While not my intention, the first two flights for the completed Rogue came at NARAM 43 in Geneseo, NY. Due to the size of the field, I had no qualms about loading it with a D12-5 for it's first flight. I was directed to a pad almost in the middle of the sport range and as the time came for my first ever launch with the Rogue or at a NARAM, the winds were still. This made me hope that my recovery walk wouldn't be excessive, but it wasn't to be. The breeze, which had been absent for the bulk of the morning, suddenly sprang to life just before the countdown began for my flight. I managed to catch a photo of the launch, which was straight with very little windcocking. Although the flight was fairly straight, the recovery was anything but. The ejection charge fired as the rocket was still traveling up, resulting in a somewhat violent start to the recovery process. Even with the comparatively large spill hole that I'd cut in the chute, the Rogue immediately began drifting with the breeze and I was afraid that my first flight at a NARAM was going to be a sacrificial offering to the corn demon at the field's edge. I watched the Rogue drift ever nearer the corn from the opposite side of one of the tents, and just when I was sure that there was no hope, the wind died and dropped the rocket at the edge of the cornfield. Sunday's flight was more of the same, landing at the edge of the same cornfield almost in my footprints from the previous day.

The third flight took place two weeks later on a day too windy for rockets. Despite the winds we went ahead with our club launch, one of the last to be held at the original QUARK home of the Lebanon YMCA. After loading the standard D12-5, I angled the Rogue into the wind to give it a better chance to land in the general vicinity of the YMCA grounds. However, it was immediately obvious that the winds were stronger above the roof line of the building that somewhat shielded us. At ejection the Rogue immediately began drifting at a rapid rate to the northwest. Even the reefed chute wasn't helping, and I chased the rocket to the edge of the parking lot before giving up and watching it drift away still hundreds of feet in the air. It looked to be well out over the highway, heading for some woods, and I decided that the day was getting too short to spend it searching for a cobbled together rocket when I could be flying its siblings. Later in the day, another rocket escaped the confines of the field and while I was looking for it I noticed a flash of orange as I drove past the long front lawn of a church that was about a half mile away from the launch site. Thinking that it might be the other missing rocket, I went to investigate and found the Rogue looking none the worse for wear. (The other rocket turned up on the front lawn of the YMCA. How I misjudged that I'll never know.)

Summary:
The thing that made this project worthwhile at the time was the unavailability of the original BNC-20R cone from any known source. Soon after completing the upscale I discovered Balsa Machining Services and ordered a cone for a 1:1 clone, then actually won an inexpensive, unopened original from an eBay auction. While the PNC-55BB nose cone is still available for cloning purposes, Q Modeling has recently added a BT-60 based Rogue to their premium product line. While the Q Modeling Rogue is much more expensive than cloning one from scratch, it is also engineered better and is likely a far better, more consistent building experience. Whichever path you choose, the Rogue's faux-missile styling almost guarantees that you will turn out a great looking 4FNC rocket with minimal effort.