So the first Estes Blackbird was the old Centuri kit and the one that came out in the mid 80's was a new Estes design?

Is the most recent Blackbird a re-release of the smaller mid 80's one or a new design?

The most recent Blackbird is the re-release of the smaller mid-80's Estes one.
Incidentally, the Estes one is MUCH more scale-looking than the Centuri one as the fuselage has the right profile whereas the Centuri one had a non-profiled round-tube that was anything but scale-like.

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When in doubt, WHACK the GAS and DITCH the brake !!!

Yes, there is such a thing as NORMAL, if you have to ask what is "NORMAL" , you probably aren't !

I remember as a kid putting on the "blackbird skin" cardstock over the main body tube and balsa wing/fins, the same as I put on the current production kit.

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Breeze -
NAR#87850
Not a member of any local club (yet)
No Cert. (yet)

Conversion to a 3 motor 18mm cluster isn't that difficult and flys like a bat outa you know where! I've worn out 4 or 5 of the Estes SR-71s over the years. It was important to devise a way to vent the outboards into the core as one of the earlier models failed to ignite the core motor while the two outborad booster -0 motors went. Great...Wonderful high flight.... very very bad ballistic landing
Since then All the SR's have been very nice flyers.

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John,

You converted it to staged airstart cluster? (I'm not sure if I'm saying that right, but I can see what it is that you did.) Ambitious!! Yeah, I'll bet it soars with that setup! (When the core does light, of course.)

That's some pretty neat engineering, micromeister.

Mark

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SAM # 0011

No mark-II:
I' converted it to a standard 3 motor (in-line) cluster. unfortunately the lift off photo of my 1st conversions 12th flight that failed to ignite the core C6-5 motor. Sorry for the confusion....after that crash, I venting the outboards into the core as a back up just incase the center motor didn't ignite at launch. Now I fly the model with a core C6-5 and 2 - C6-7's in the outboards.