At the risk of starting trouble, for which I'm in the mood , I'm listing some of the doo-dads and habits common in this hobby for which I have great skepticism of their net benefits.

Baffles: I've never used one. I've always thought they were a solution in search of a problem. Saving a few pieces of treated toilet paper...well, it ain't much of a savings. And, I'm pretty sure they don't really keep all the burn off the chutes all the time. Right?

Fancy motor retaining hardware (eg, Aero Pack): How hard is it to cook up a couple of Kaplow clips? If you're losing motors due to retention issues, maybe you need to take some remedial rocketry classes

Tapered fins: Yeah, I've done a few. Guess what? Unless you're flying competition, they're more trouble than they're worth. They're more prone to breaking, and, as a sport flier, the added altitude only makes them harder to track. Sure, the occasional indulgence is perfectly acceptable, but for those who have a life, square cut fins work danged fine

Long shock cords: Whoever came up with the foul notion that making the shock cord longer solves the problem of high speed deployment needs to take a high school course in physics. If your rocket is plunging toward the earth at 400mph, I don't care if the shock cord is 300 feet long, when the rocket gets to the end of the cord, there's gonna be one heckuva a jerk on the airframe, the suspension lines and the recovery harness. You can quote me on that.

Clear coats: Over decals? Sure. Over anything else? Use a paint that doesn't need to be clear coated. It's called enamel. Check some out. Save that extra effort for building another rocket.

Q2G2 ignitors: They're awesome. Best commercial ignitor ever for air-starts. But they're not an absolute necessity for ground-started clusters. I've lit many clusters using plain old Solar ignitors, and had excellent results getting all motors lit most of the time, and never had an ignitor related failure. Us old far...timers remember that before Solars, we had nichrome and crap - those were the two choices. Solars were a light years-ahead improvement. Now, 30-some years later, they're still a danged fine ignitor, and all that's needed most of the time.

Alright, that's all I can think of for now, but I'm sure I'll remember three more as soon as I hit the send button...

Doug...feeling rather curmudgeonly...

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YORF member #11