Estes Classic Kit Build - U.S.S. Atlantis

Well I'm gonna finally dust off the old workbench this weekend and since it's been quite awhile since I started this blog I have apologize to my single follower out there (sorry Jeff) that I've been so lax in getting anything built. Actually that's not exactly true as I've done several model railroading projects recently but that's not the subject of this blog... This is a spacemodeling blog so let's build some rockets!

For my inagural spacemodeling project, I've decided to go ahead and build one of my absolute favorite old Estes kits from the 1970's... The "USS Atlantis" (kit# 1283). This kit was introduced in 1976 as something that might have existed in the "Star Trek" universe. I bought several of these kits back in the 1980s from Earl's Hobby Shop in Bellflower, CA (a favorite So Cal rocketry hang out back in the day) with the thought that I would build at least one while saving the others as collectors kits. This is the only one I managed to hang onto and since it got opened somewhere along the way, whats the harm in building it. This should be fun and will hopefully bring back some fond old memories of the last time I built one of these back in the mid-1970s.

The first thing we'll do is inventory our parts and check on their condition. After all the kit is over 30 years old...