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.

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.

Centuri Excalibur 2

One of the classic late-1970s Centuri model rockets, the Excalibur 2 two-stage sport model, photographed a few moments before launch in northeast Switzerland on April 16, 1986. For this flight, the booster was powered by an Estes C6-0 motor while the upper stage used an Estes C6-7 motor. The rocket performed flawlessly, but windy conditions, combined with the comparatively high altitude achieved, caused much drift during the recovery phase. A second flight by the same rocket that day was thus made without the booster and with the lower power of an Estes B6-4 motor in the upper stage.

The Excalibur 2 was a development of Centuri's earlier, beautifully sleek Excalibur, a single-stage model rocket styled to look like the sounding rockets of the day. Excalibur 2 measured 724 mm in length and 23 mm in diameter. The kit came with a plastic nose cone and Centuri's own Pass-Port staging connector.

Photography by Marco Schenker.