In my posts on this blog, I frequently alluded to how mythical Enerjet and that company's products appeared to us teenagers in mid-1970s Switzerland. At the same time, it was often difficult for us to find sufficient and reliable information about developments in our field of interest. We had to rely on issues of Model Rocketeer magazine, sporadic glimpses offered in company periodicals such as the Rocket Times or Model Rocket News. Or we deducted as much as we could from photos and text published in G. Harry Stine's Handbook Of Model Rocketry or Centuri's Model Rocket Design Manual, among others.
Congruent with our increasing skill in building and flying model rockets, we coveted any possibility to accomplish more advanced concepts and obtain motors with increased power. In the second half of the 1970s, when we became increasingly immersed in rocketry, Enerjet no longer existed, and it is very doubtful if any of Enerjet's products ever even made it to Switzerland while the company traded. We eventually found some solace when it became possible to obtain Flight Systems' products through a distributor in Germany, and we duly moved up a notch, both in motor power and materials.
But one of the rockets that always exerted an iconic radiance on me was Enerjet's 1340/20 payload rocket, first seen by us on page 231 of the fourth edition of the Handbook Of Model Rocketry, in 1976. Although I knew next to nothing about this rocket at the time, it became one of those designs that has never ceased to fascinate me in the 41 years since.
After Enerjet's demise, parent company Centuri continued to offer a number of components that were part of some of the former's most notable rockets. Among them were the #13 plastic fin unit (prod. no. F-413L), used by Enerjet's 1340 and 1340/20 designs and later part of Centuri's Phoenix Bird and Argos "Kwik Kits". Or the transition section and nose cone of the payload section of Enerjet's 1340/20, later offered in the guise of an egg capsule (prod. no. PNC-13E/ST-202), for example in Centuri's Rocket Times in fall of 1975 (a supplement to Centuri catalogue no. 761). And following the merger of Centuri and Estes, these parts occasionally reappeared as part of Estes kits, such as the Eliminator (the fin unit) or Eggspress (payload section).
Nonetheless, obtaining these parts to construct an Enerjet 1340/20 replica in the present day proved somewhat challenging, in spite of their sporadic availability and modern procurement tools such as the internet and eBay. Another surprise was the material used for the 1340/20's transition section and nose cone in their most recent guise as the egg capsule of the Eggspress. Instead of the more common, glueable high-impact styrene used for most nose cones, the plastic used for these parts is reminiscent of cheap garden toys for children, as usually imported from Asia, i.e., polyethylene. This flexible plastic is difficult to sand (and sanding is unavoidable due to the age of the original moulds), glue, and paint. I suppose this material was chosen due to its ability to absorb impacts without cracking.
The styrene plastic fin unit, on the other hand, appears to be entirely unchanged from the one I owned as part of my Centuri Phoenix Bird in 1978. The only difference is the colour in which it is moulded. As I was beginning to run low on original Enerjet waterslide decals, I had Wessex Transfers in Australia print me some replica decals.
Enerjet logo and Enerjet 1340/20 brochure sample page © by Enerjet Inc., Phoenix/AZ, USA.
