Centuri Starfire

The iconic Centuri Starfire was the first professional model rocket kit I ever purchased and built, in 1976 or 1977. Even if just for that reason alone, it will always evoke fond memories, but it was also a very sleek and attractive design, and a well-equipped kit (featuring a plastic nose cone, two parachutes, a metallic "spec plate", and nice waterslide decals). I thus purchased additional copies of the kit during subsequent years, both to build as intended and to use as a basis for conversions.

The above photos show one of these later incarnations of the Starfire, photographed on a customized theodolite metal tripod during a launch in northeast Switzerland, on April 16, 1986. It was a somewhat windy day, so the rocket was only flown with an Estes B6-4 motor. The flight was perfect, but that was always easy to achieve with the very stable Starfire. This particular rocket has survived to this day.

Centuri KC-12/#5072 Starfire face card © by Centuri Engineering Company, scanned from the actual kit that yielded the Starfire shown above. Photography by Marco Schenker.