The design of the v2 is one of the most iconic rockets in rocketry. The bubble shape can be found in almost any rocketry related thing from forum headliners piggy banks comic books and everything in between. I highly recommend this rocket to EVERYONE. With the cost of the Estes V2 it really makes it an affordable rocket for any rocketeer. The nice thing about this rocket is it isn't small at all. It has a fairly large airframe and a nice bulky nose and tail cones. A couple tips when building this rocket; use kevlar to anchor to the motormount then a shock cord drill too holes on the bottom of the nose cone to loop another piece of kevlar and use elastic in between the too. This will save the nose cone anchor point from snapping on ejection and also will be stronger then the elastic mated to the MMT. If using epoxy to do the fin fillets use some masking tape around the fins to help keep it even. peel away masking tape after a couple minutes (before hardening starts)and it will leave you a nice clean fillet. This rocket has nice low and slow flights. Great for flying on smaller fields.

This was one of the more entertaining kits from Estes that I have put together in a long time. There are several deficiencies in the kit, but the end result is still a 5 star rating in my mind. First, the mold alignment on the nose cone is quite poor. Took a lot of filler and sanding to level out the step. Second, the instructions do not have you adding fillets between the fins and the plastic taper piece. In my opinion, edge gluing the fins blindly through the wall to the engine mount is not sufficient. I ended up using epoxy with microballoons to make some very smooth fillets that bonded well to the fins and the plastic taper unit. Third, and this is a jab at all Estes LPR's, is I don't know why they insist on using a cheap shock cord for a rocket. A Kevlar leader to an elastic shock cord is a near negligible addition in cost of the kit and should be included. On the plus side, the remainder of the components were very nice. Balsa was high quality. The body tube was stronger than most Estes kits I built (still highly recommend filling the seams). I ended up upgrading the shock cord, and applying a very light fiberglass to the fins. I also did a bit of research and modified the airfoil shape of the fins to be more representative of the actual V2. This was my favorite build and is probably the nicest looking rocket in my fleet. You certainly cannot beat the price. I look forward to flying it!

After buying the Estes V2 as a gift for someone else I decided I had to have one myself. When the kit arrived I was pleased by the quality of the parts, particularly the fins. Hard, straight balsa with not a twist or warp to be found. The tail cone was perfectly molded with a minimum of seam scraping needed. The nosecone had a bit of a wider seam that needed filling and sanding to fix. The rest of the parts were of typically high Estes quality. Construction of this kit differs from the average Estes kit because of the need to glue wood and cardboard parts to the plastic tail cone. In addition to wood glue you will need to use medium or thick CA. You will also need to fit the fins for a good glue joint with the tail cone. All other construction will be familiar to anyone who's built an Estes kit before. Painting the rocket is the hardest part of the entire build process. Masking the compound curves of the nose and tail cones takes patience and a good quality masking tape that can fit to the curves. It's very much worth the work involved, though, because once the paint is done it's a very sharp looking rocket! Overall I'm very satisfied with this kit. I would hesitate to give it to someone as a first kit, it would be much better left until at least a couple of others have been completed.

After a 3 month wait for this backorder, I found this kit was well worth the wait. Decent size, fairly easy build, and a stable flight. Ended up buying a second kit and gave it to a friend...who also gave it a great review.

Overall, this is an excellent offering from Estes. It's definitely the best value for money in a V2 kit in this size range, with the only other offering I could find being the U.S. Rockets kit at around $60. The parts are standard Estes - molded plastic nose cone and boat tail, thin wall body tubing, heavier duty 24mm motor mount tubing, and laser-cut paper centering rings and balsa fins. The fin stock in my kit was excellent - no bows and a nice tight grain. Building the kit, there are several areas where extra care must be taken. The fins are mounted through the boat tail to the motor mount, which makes for a strong bond. However, the slots in the boat tail are NOT pre-cut. Since they are actually a molded hump on the outside of the boat tail that has to be cut out by the builder, they wind up being wider than the fin stock, and slightly shorter than the tab on the fin. This results in some minor difficulty getting the fins on and aligned properly, as the laser-cut paper fin alignment fixture did not in any way line up correctly on my kit. What I did was tack each fin in place through the boat tail to the motor tube with thin CA, taking care to get it on straight, then dribble a small amount of 5-min epoxy down each side to the motor tube, tilting the whole assembly to get it to make a nice small fillet to the motor mount. Although this definitely took extra time, it was worth it for the peace of mind. The gap between the edges of the slot in the boat tail and the fin was easily filled with thickened epoxy. Just remember to rough up the boat tail with some 60 grit sandpaper for good epoxy adhesion. Aside from the slight challenges related to the boat tail, this kit went together really nicely. All the other parts fit nicely, and for a sport-scale kit it includes some nice molded detail on the boat tail. The kit comes with some clay nose weight, but after getting the kit together and painted and into Rocksim, I wound up adding 1.1oz of nose weight to get it stable on Aerotech 24/40 reloads. I also added a spare 24 Nylon chute I had laying around. The first flight was on an Estes D12-5 (NOT the recommended D12-3), chosen after simming both the -3 and -5 in Rocksim. The 5 second delay wound up being perfect, popping the top right at apogee for a gentle landing. Overall, a great kit, especially for the price, and definitely a looker on the pad.

This was a great kit to build, I used my own colors which I think made it more my V2, nice thing is this is one of the Rockets that gives you many color possibilities.

I have just un-boxed my V-2 and I am excited by the possibilities! I originally intended to do my usual - sort of follow the directions, upgrade to a larger motor mount, etc. but now that I see the unusually detailed fin area and the other cool details I have decided to try a scale project. The stock paint job is cool but searching online reveals a ton of options for cool finishes. I am looking forward to building this bad boy!

The design of the v2 is one of the most iconic rockets in rocketry. The bubble shape can be found in almost any rocketry related thing from forum headliners piggy banks comic books and everything in between. I highly recommend this rocket to EVERYONE. With the cost of the Estes V2 it really makes it an affordable rocket for any rocketeer. The nice thing about this rocket is it isn't small at all. It has a fairly large airframe and a nice bulky nose and tail cones. A couple tips when building this rocket; use kevlar to anchor to the motormount then a shock cord drill too holes on the bottom of the nose cone to loop another piece of kevlar and use elastic in between the too. This will save the nose cone anchor point from snapping on ejection and also will be stronger then the elastic mated to the MMT. If using epoxy to do the fin fillets use some masking tape around the fins to help keep it even. peel away masking tape after a couple minutes (before hardening starts)and it will leave you a nice clean fillet. This rocket has nice low and slow flights. Great for flying on smaller fields.

This was one of the more entertaining kits from Estes that I have put together in a long time. There are several deficiencies in the kit, but the end result is still a 5 star rating in my mind. First, the mold alignment on the nose cone is quite poor. Took a lot of filler and sanding to level out the step. Second, the instructions do not have you adding fillets between the fins and the plastic taper piece. In my opinion, edge gluing the fins blindly through the wall to the engine mount is not sufficient. I ended up using epoxy with microballoons to make some very smooth fillets that bonded well to the fins and the plastic taper unit. Third, and this is a jab at all Estes LPR's, is I don't know why they insist on using a cheap shock cord for a rocket. A Kevlar leader to an elastic shock cord is a near negligible addition in cost of the kit and should be included. On the plus side, the remainder of the components were very nice. Balsa was high quality. The body tube was stronger than most Estes kits I built (still highly recommend filling the seams). I ended up upgrading the shock cord, and applying a very light fiberglass to the fins. I also did a bit of research and modified the airfoil shape of the fins to be more representative of the actual V2. This was my favorite build and is probably the nicest looking rocket in my fleet. You certainly cannot beat the price. I look forward to flying it!

After buying the Estes V2 as a gift for someone else I decided I had to have one myself. When the kit arrived I was pleased by the quality of the parts, particularly the fins. Hard, straight balsa with not a twist or warp to be found. The tail cone was perfectly molded with a minimum of seam scraping needed. The nosecone had a bit of a wider seam that needed filling and sanding to fix. The rest of the parts were of typically high Estes quality. Construction of this kit differs from the average Estes kit because of the need to glue wood and cardboard parts to the plastic tail cone. In addition to wood glue you will need to use medium or thick CA. You will also need to fit the fins for a good glue joint with the tail cone. All other construction will be familiar to anyone who's built an Estes kit before. Painting the rocket is the hardest part of the entire build process. Masking the compound curves of the nose and tail cones takes patience and a good quality masking tape that can fit to the curves. It's very much worth the work involved, though, because once the paint is done it's a very sharp looking rocket! Overall I'm very satisfied with this kit. I would hesitate to give it to someone as a first kit, it would be much better left until at least a couple of others have been completed.

After a 3 month wait for this backorder, I found this kit was well worth the wait. Decent size, fairly easy build, and a stable flight. Ended up buying a second kit and gave it to a friend...who also gave it a great review.

Overall, this is an excellent offering from Estes. It's definitely the best value for money in a V2 kit in this size range, with the only other offering I could find being the U.S. Rockets kit at around $60. The parts are standard Estes - molded plastic nose cone and boat tail, thin wall body tubing, heavier duty 24mm motor mount tubing, and laser-cut paper centering rings and balsa fins. The fin stock in my kit was excellent - no bows and a nice tight grain. Building the kit, there are several areas where extra care must be taken. The fins are mounted through the boat tail to the motor mount, which makes for a strong bond. However, the slots in the boat tail are NOT pre-cut. Since they are actually a molded hump on the outside of the boat tail that has to be cut out by the builder, they wind up being wider than the fin stock, and slightly shorter than the tab on the fin. This results in some minor difficulty getting the fins on and aligned properly, as the laser-cut paper fin alignment fixture did not in any way line up correctly on my kit. What I did was tack each fin in place through the boat tail to the motor tube with thin CA, taking care to get it on straight, then dribble a small amount of 5-min epoxy down each side to the motor tube, tilting the whole assembly to get it to make a nice small fillet to the motor mount. Although this definitely took extra time, it was worth it for the peace of mind. The gap between the edges of the slot in the boat tail and the fin was easily filled with thickened epoxy. Just remember to rough up the boat tail with some 60 grit sandpaper for good epoxy adhesion. Aside from the slight challenges related to the boat tail, this kit went together really nicely. All the other parts fit nicely, and for a sport-scale kit it includes some nice molded detail on the boat tail. The kit comes with some clay nose weight, but after getting the kit together and painted and into Rocksim, I wound up adding 1.1oz of nose weight to get it stable on Aerotech 24/40 reloads. I also added a spare 24 Nylon chute I had laying around. The first flight was on an Estes D12-5 (NOT the recommended D12-3), chosen after simming both the -3 and -5 in Rocksim. The 5 second delay wound up being perfect, popping the top right at apogee for a gentle landing. Overall, a great kit, especially for the price, and definitely a looker on the pad.