Vehicle 65

Vehicle 65, a minimum-diameter, high-performance sport model rocket intended for 18 mm C6-7 black powder motors.

Vehicle 65 was built in April of 1999, using Centuri (PNC 76 nose cone) and Estes (BT-20 body tube and EB-20A engine block) parts as well as 1.7 mm plywood fins. The rocket measures 306 mm in length, and it is recovered by a Centuri RS-20 streamer.

Given the small size of this rocket and the altitudes attainable with it, it likely wasn't my greatest idea ever to paint it green and thus render it camouflaged after recovery.

Top photo shows Vehicle 65 shortly after completion and on an Estes Porta-Pad II launch pad in Thalwil, Switzerland; bottom photos were taken in Zurich, Switzerland, in August 2016.

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.