10-02-2016, 09:04 PM
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Master Modeler
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Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Fairbanks, Alaska
Posts: 6,507
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by tbzep
I guess it's possible the 69 Centuri kit had balsa fins, but the 70 model definitely had oversized plastic fins. I have a feeling the 69 did too. If you notice, the 1/100 Saturn 1B is described as "pre-shaped" fins also. I don't recall it ever having balsa fins.
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I can see in the 1971 Centuri catalog citation (see: http://www.ninfinger.org/rockets/ca...d/71dcen30.html )--from the illustration, and from the text mentioning "hollow core" and "clear molded" fins--that their Saturn V kit (by that time, if not from the very beginning) had slightly-over-sized molded plastic fins (theirs were more subtly "nudged" out of scale than the Estes kit's fins, in its later releases). Also:
I had always thought that Centuri's Saturn IB had plastic fins too, and their use of the term "pre-shaped fins" in their Saturn V kit description--as well as in their Saturn IB's kit description--does indeed suggest that their Saturn IB also had plastic fins from the start. (In those days, plastic parts in model rockets were still something of a novelty [even plastic nose cones in 3FNC and 4FNC kits were touted as special features back then], so I can see how they could have used "pre-shaped fins" to denote detailed, high-fidelity molded scale--or very nearly so, in the case of their Saturn V kit--plastic fins.) |