Homage To Model Missiles, Inc.

I scratch-built this semi scale Aerojet-General Aerobee-Hi in 1986, using Centuri parts. It was an homage of sorts to the beginnings of our hobby and thus to some of the protagonists that had inspired me during my youth, ten years earlier: Orville H. Carlisle and G. Harry Stine.

As described, for example, in a fantastic article titled The First Model Rocket Kits, authored by G. Harry Stine and published on pages 5 to 9 of the February 1978 issue of Model Rocketeer magazine, Carlisle and Stine's Model Missiles, Inc. produced the Aerobee-Hi as the company's first proper model rocket kit in 1958. Moreover, I also admired the early Aerobee-Hi model rockets when I obtained what was my first copy of the Handbook Of Model Rocketry (Fourth Edition) in 1976 or 1977, such as in the formidable launch photo on page 125. We were model rocket obsessed teenagers at the time and not only glorified G. Harry Stine but also the beautifully pure design of the Aerobee-Hi rocket.

My own Aerobee-Hi was first launched on May 28, 1999, many years after I had originally completed it. The top photo shows the final preparations for this maiden flight, conducted with an Estes B6-4 motor in northeast Switzerland. As can be expected for such an immaculate design, it performed flawlessly. The lower two photos show the same rocket in May 2016, in Zurich, Switzerland.