1972 Enerjet Catalogue

Sample pages from the unique and intriguing 1972 Enerjet advanced rocketry model products catalogue (no. 721).

As deeply curious and utterly determined teenagers building model rockets in remote (from a consumer point of view) Switzerland in the mid to late 1970s, we were continuously driven towards increasingly advanced rocket concepts and the quest for rocket motors more powerful than the commonly available A, B, C, and D-class motors. Mind you, it was far from granted to find even such "regular" motors in Switzerland at the time. Our ambitions were satisfied to some extent when a German distributor brought the product line of Flight Systems Inc. to our hemisphere and we were finally able to obtain their range of D, E, and F black powder motors.

In our minds, however, Enerjet represented the holy grail of advanced model rocketry, and it therefore served as the underlying inspiration for many of our own projects. This was of course long before readily available information by means of the internet, and even though Enerjet was no longer trading as an active company by that time, the company, for us, was thus an entity equally shrouded in mystery and emitting a limitless fascination. The few things we knew about Enerjet had been glanced from pictures in books (the Handbook Of Model Rocketry) and Centuri brochures, or from the remnants of Enerjet's existence as evident in Centuri's catalogues.

I would have given anything to own the 1972 Enerjet catalogue at the time (or to even be granted to have a brief look at it), but any such publications remained unobtainably elusive for us two rocket obsessed adolescents in Switzerland. Only much later in my life was I finally able to obtain a pristine original edition. The infinite waiting period mattered little; Enerjet's very existence and iconic designs still represent the same captivating inspiration to me to this very day.

The above excerpts from the 24-page catalogue show, for example, Enerjet's revolutionary "port burning" composite motors with glass fibre casing, or the fantastic (and operable) Nike Smoke semi scale rocket (vaguely similar to the Centuri kit) and Nike Ram high altitude payload rocket.

1972 Enerjet catalogue sample pages © by Enerjet Inc., Phoenix/AZ, USA, 1972, scanned from my personal copy of the catalogue.

[Entry amended October 31, 2016; with thanks to Chris Michielssen.]

Vehicle 77 Redux

A clear personal favourite in my fleet, the Enerjet Nike Ram-inspired Vehicle 77, photographed in northeast Switzerland on July 30, 1999, on the occasion of a flight powered by a 24 mm Aerotech E28-7T RMS composite motor. This flight took place in the early afternoon of a beautifully clear day, with low winds, and a temperature of around 30 degrees Celsius.

Launched off an Aerotech Mantis pad, Vehicle 77 carried a 6 volt piezo sonic locator. The rocket flew fast, very stable, and out of sight, to a computed altitude of slightly over 800 meters. The parachute deployed perfectly, but the rocket's payload section and parachute became entangled in a barn drain pipe upon landing. The tallest member of our little launch group was just able to pull it free, but the piezo sonic locator was lost during the retrieval, and the plastic parachute was damaged. Vehicle 77 itself survived in perfect condition.

A few weeks later, I replaced damaged parachute (it had likely been the wrong choice for such a rocket at any rate) with a nylon parachute by Rogue Aerospace.

Vehicle 89

Top: Vehicle 89, a vaguely Enerjet-inspired sport model rocket with a 130 mm payload section. Vehicle 89 is based on the earlier Vehicle 69, originally designed to carry the then state-of-the-art Estes AstroCam aerial camera. Vehicle 89 measures 611 mm in length and 34 mm in diameter. It was built with Estes parts, and it was intended to be flown with 24 mm D or E motors.

Bottom: Vehicle 89 and Vehicle 77, an approximate hommage to the fantastic Enerjet Nike Ram advanced model rocket of the early 1970s. Both photos were taken in Zurich, Switzerland, in June of 2016.

Enerjet Nike Ram Copy

Vehicle 77, a sport model rocket with payload section, loosely based on Enerjet's iconic Nike Ram advanced model rocket of 1972. Vehicle 77 measured 643 mm in length (versus the Nike Ram's 590 mm) and 34 mm in diameter (as per the original). It was designed to be powered by D or E-type composite motors and was constructed slightly more robustly than the original.

Vehicle 77 is shown here on an Aerotech Mantis launch pad. The photo was taken in Thalwil, Switzerland, in May 1999, the month of its completion. Vehicle 77 first flew on June 17, 1999, with an Aerotech E15-7W motor.