Rocket Fleet, 1989

Scans of two regrettably very deficient analog photos taken at my former home in Nürensdorf, Switzerland, in autumn of 1989, depicting part of what was then my rocket fleet as well as some designs under construction at the time.

Top photo shows, from left: Vehicle 59, built from Flight Systems and Centuri parts and designed to fly with Flight Systems E black powder motors. Vehicle 59 measured 886 mm in length (including a payload section of 456 mm length). The rocket in the center is my scratch-built Honest John semi scale model (still lacking any finer details), while the model on the right is Vehicle 51 B Enigma II, a development of the earlier Vehicle 39 A Enigma. Vehicle 51 B was constructed using Estes, Centuri, and CMR components and intended to be flown with Flight Systems E and F motors. It measured 896 mm in length and featured a payload section of 158 mm usable space. The lower and upper sections of the rocket were recovered by means of two separate parachutes.

Lower photo, from left: Vehicle 32, a cluster design utilizing three 18 mm motors and featuring a payload section. Next to it are Vehicle 23, a 24 mm experimental design with ultra thin, high aspect-ratio plywood fins, and Vehicle 22 B, also using three high aspect-ratio plywood fins that were strengthened with an epoxy coating. The rocket line-up is completed by Vehicle 48 A Heracles (designed for 21 mm and 24 mm D motors), Vehicle 39 A Enigma, and Vehicle 44 A Rhea (a sport model with payload section, built specifically for Flight Systems D18 motors).

Cox Rocket Launch System

While looking around a long-since closed toy store in the heart of Zurich, Switzerland, as a young teenager in 1974, I happened upon a model rocketry catalogue. Noticing my excitement, the owner said I could take it. It was their last copy, and they apparently no longer sold rockets. This was the 1972 Cox Model Rocketry catalogue.

I had become fascinated by rockets and space flight due to the late 1960s Apollo missions which, with Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz, were still continuing at the time. I was thus of course utterly captivated by the semi scale and scale-like model rockets in the catalogue. It would still take two more years until I first held a professional model rocket and motor in my hands; by that time, however, we couldn't find any Cox model rocketry items anywhere anymore. Nonetheless, that catalogue would always remain an extraordinary source of inspiration for me.

Only much later in my life was I at last able to acquire an actual item from the 1972 Cox catalogue: the Rocket Launch System launch pad and launch controller, one of the items that had always interested me most, owing to its realistic look. Judging by the minor exhaust staining on the metal blast deflector, it had likely been used only once, and it was sold in its equally mint-condition original box.

I subsequently restored the blast deflector gently, and I modified the launch pad slightly by making the wires of the remote launch controller and ignition connector disconnectable and fixing the rather flimsy adjustable feet in place. The Honest John model rocket displayed on the Rocket Launch System in the top image is not the Cox flying plastic model, however, but rather a completely scratch-built sport scale model rocket originally begun in 1986 and repaired and finished in the late 1990s.

Cox Rocket Launch System front and back box artwork © by L.M. Cox Manufacturing, Inc./Leisure Dynamics, Inc., scanned from my actual kit. Top photo taken in Zurich, Switzerland, on June 23, 2016.