Enerjet 1340/20

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.

Classic Centuri Publications

As much as I of course also loved Estes' extraordinary product range, I will likely forever lament the unfortunare demise of Centuri as an active manufacturer. There was just something about Centuri (and Enerjet) that connected seamlessly with my own frame of mind. With such confession out of the way, these are some of the truly extraordinary booklets and brochures published by Centuri in the 1970s. It was sometimes challenging for us, who were based in Switzerland, to obtain these publications at the time (as related in various posts in this blog). Moreover, when spending whatever pocket money was available to us, our priority was of course to obtain model rocket kits and motors.

Needless to say, every single one of these releases by Centuri was thus a veritable treasure to us. Not just because of the information contained therein, but also because of the wealth of deeply inspiring photos they presented. This was long before the internet, after all, and the nearly limitless amounts of reference material it offers to today's model rocket enthusiasts.

American Rocketeer was Centuri's house magazine, providing a mixture of company and product news, educational material, and advertising. Volume 4/Number 1 (1970, top row, left) was a prime example, its pages filled with beautiful black & white period photos of real and model rockets. Of note is the announcement, in a small article on page 11, that Centuri Engineering had acquired an 80% interest in a new subsidiary company called Enerjet. The magazine also proudly declares that Centuri's impressive Saturn V model rocket had one advantage over the original: it could be flown repeatedly.

American Rocketeer Volume 5/Number 1 (1971, top row, right) provided more of the same. Most prominent was an article about the Apollo 16 moon mission, followed by an extremely detailed two-page article on scratch-building the large and unusual Uni-Bird model rocket (also shown on the cover). But for us fanatics in Switzerland, starved for anything model rocket related, even just seeing the photo featured as part of the Centuri ad on the back cover amplified our enthusiasm.

Centuri's original Model Rocket Designers Manual (1971, top row, centre left) was one of the publications we frequently saw advertised but never managed to obtain until many years later. It is a small-format guide to all things model rocketry, beautifully illustrated and very comprehensive.

The petite Model Rocket Mini-Manual (1975, top row, centre right) was just a folded flyer included with some of Centuri's kits. It contained only the most important information about model rocketry, but we loved it as an addition to our collections of rocketry items.

The Model Rocket Design Manual (1975, bottom row, left), authored by Grant Boyd, was a large-format, expanded version of the above mentioned Model Rocket Designers Manual. Now printed as a substantial softcover booklet, it served us countless times as a source for new ideas. It contained chapters on techniques, staging, gliding, clusters, scale, displays, odd designs, and much more. Its layout, articles, and photo content also had the (thoroughly intended) effect to make us even more eager to obtain Centuri products.

The fantastic Power-System Handbook Operating Manual (1977, bottom row, centre) recycled some of the Design Manual's material, but it was truly unique in leading the modeller through a cohesive and educational building project involving the X-7 and X-16 modular rockets. And once again, the countless drawings and photos serve make this booklet a joy to browse through, even decades later.

Centuri's Model Rocket Club Guide (bottom row, right) was exactly that, a primer on establishing a model rocket club. Dave Sharma and me preferred to refrain from joining any club at the time (not that there would have been many options), and so the actual value of the Club Guide, to us, was again to be found in the inspiring photographic content.

Photo taken in Zurich, Switzerland, on July 1, 2016.