Explorer Aquarius

The Estes Explorer Aquarius is a nice rocket brought back from 1980 and has been up powered to an E BP motor, or same size composite motors, but I think it's a little under engineered. 1st instead of surrounding the fins with body tubes and balsa ribs, I would have made through tube slots and extended the root tabs of the fins to match down to the BT-50 engine tube. 2nd BT-50 airframe strengthener tube for composite motors. 3rd assemble with epoxy, no wood glue. 4th plywood centering rings for the motor mount. 5th Pro Series 24mm Retainer instead of the engine clip and leave out the engine block for longer grain cases, example 24mm 60N cases on up to, but not much more than a 3-4 grain cases will over power the aerodynamics. 6th upgrade recovery system, by installing an ejection baffle, replace stock shock cord with 100lbs. braided nylon, or Kevlar cord and attach to centering ring and upgrade parachute to nylon. These upgrades will put the Explorer Aquarius over 1,400 feet so I would improve the aero package of the cargo pods by adding blunt BT-20 nose cones and not use the paper nose blocks provided in the kit, again 18 BT-20's x2= 36nose cones and bringing 'Sexy' back to model rocketry.