Centuri Starfire (Redux)

My Centuri Starfire, already discussed on this blog in mid-July, seen returning to earth after one of several fantastically stable and reliable fights at Allmend Frauenfeld, Switzerland, on April 26, 1986. It was a beautiful and only slightly windy day, and we flew our rockets next to the launch site chosen for a model rocket competition hosted on the same date by the Technorama science museum.

We conducted a total of 31 launches during the morning and afternoon, and without intending to do so at all, we ended up stealing the spotlight from the official competition. The competitors' rockets were required to be powered only by mini motors, while we flew anything from Estes B to Flight Systems E motors, including some rare D13-7 composite motors of eastern European manufacture - these were the days when the Iron Curtain still existed. Needless to say, we received a number of jealous glances from the organizers of the competition, as the spectators kept watching our flights rather than theirs. But such is life.

Centuri Javelin

Centuri's unpretentious but graceful Javelin model rocket appeared in the company's range of kits as early as 1965. A little more than a decade later, two young teenagers in rural Switzerland first discovered professionally manufactured model rockets and motors. I was one of them, and the beautifully detailed and richly illustrated pages of the Estes and Centuri catalogues of the 1970s captivated me deeply. Next to the Starfire and the two-stage Stiletto, the Javelin was among the earliest Centuri rockets I purchased, approximately in 1978. At that time, I built it youthfully deficiently, but it still performed impressively.

Another twenty-odd years later, with Centuri long since having ceased to exist as an active manufacturer, I was able to locate a pristine Javelin kit. It was exactly as I remembered it, with all its highlights and flaws (e.g. the plastic nose cone being slightly too wide for the body tube). This time, I built it to a higher standard, and it resulted in a beautiful, clean model rocket, reminiscent of the exciting good old days of this hobby. This Javelin is shown above, photographed yet again almost twenty years after its completion, in Zurich, Switzerland, in May of 2016.

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.