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Old 03-01-2011, 11:12 AM
Jerry Irvine's Avatar
Jerry Irvine Jerry Irvine is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Earl
I have never seen these tubes come with a black outside finish. Generally, they were the brown or white glassine finish.

Again, I'll defer to Jerry to add any additional insight on tube colors, in particular for the heavier walled tubes that came with these kits.

I'm also trying to determine the exact nature of the payload tube plastic connector. I have an original copy of the 1340 product sheet ( just like the one in this kit bag) and it indicates the exposed length of tha payload connector to be only one tenth of an inch. I've never seen even a photo of one of those connectors, but it is really hard to make out any real details of the connector in this kit bag.

Earl
The first kit to use the plastic fin unit, plastic nose cone and plastic tube coupler was the Phoenix Bird. The fins were blue. The tubes were white and it had a silver stick on decal.

About the same time Enerjet (also Centuri) made the 1340 which used Mini-Max tube (also Centuri) 1.25 x 1.34 x 12" brown with glassine for the 1340 airframe and a red molded Phoenix Bird fin unit. The motor cost more than the rocket.

The nose cone and coupler mold were different for Phoenix Bird and 1340. The tube thicknesses were very different, 1.30 x 1.34 x 12" for Centuri (now Estes BT-56).

The coupler on the 1340 had a short section the diameter of the tube OD about 1/10" long (recall it being a bit more). The Phoenix Bird variant had about an inch long section with an access plate image in the mold for added value. Technical sounding customers didn't care about that. They wanted strength and performance.

The fin unit's "marginal power" turned out to be a BATES 29mm 160G80 motor. Sometimes it would shred, sometimes not.

The 1340 parts were all molded in red.

I have not personally seen an Enerjet motor packaged in a bag with a kit but was never an official sounding rocket customer either. I posted a letter in CRm I received from Enerjet when I tried to become one. It's on the CRm website.

I hope this helps. I am not discouraging anyone from bidding because complete or not the instructions, plastic parts, and correct parts are themselves worth it for a rare find. Correct mating parts could be made if needed.

I have asked Estes about remolding the 1340 parts but bad to no noises followed. They seem to have an inventory control problem on old molds. At least they are nowhere near as bad as Wal-Mart!

Jerry

I don't recall, but the 12" lengths might be 9" or something.
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