As someone who has done graphic work in the past, I can really appreciate these layouts - I think that they are beautiful!

And as someone who knows his way around a pen and inkwell (yeah, the REAL kind), I really like and admire the drawings used to illustrate the plans in the Vern Estes-era Estes Industries kits and MRN. The scans that are available on the internet do not always do these drawings justice. (Don't get me wrong here, though; I think that the scans admirably fulfill their intended purpose.) You cannot always see how really good many of these illustrations are when you view the scans. They reflect an aesthetic from another era, before the development of CAD. These were drawn by hand with a pen on a sheet of paper by someone who really knew what he was doing. Someone who really understood the process that he was depicting, someone who carefully considered what he wanted to show and just how to show it. Those illustrations reflect an artistic sense, and are not just dry cookie-cutter engineering drawings. This is more than just T-square, slide rule wonkiness - this is art.

The drawings in the Centuri plans were good, but they often did not rise to anywhere near this level. On the other hand, I think that the layouts in the Centuri catalogs, especially in the first five or six years, are truly outstanding. They don't have as much personal relevance for me, though; I have only seen them at Ninfinger. In contrast, I carried around the 1967, 1968 and 1969 Estes Industries catalogs with me every minute of every day in those years, and spent many, many hours poring over them on the bus to and from school, in homeroom, in study hall and in the cafeteria, and at home in my room after school. I had every page memorized!

Mark \\.

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SAM # 0011

Hey Initiator,
Thanks for posting the photos.
I had a big surprise in the fourth photo. The white rocket on the left of the highest shelf. Its got some yellow and black on one "fin". That's my rocket!
That was my entry in the 1972 Photo Contest. It won the first prize, a Mini-Bike. When we visited the factory I gave it to Larry Brown. It had swept "wing" fins and flush "engines" around the rudder. I called it "Starship Epsilon".
I'm flattered is was in their store!

Hans "Chris" Michielssen
www.howtobuildmodelrockets.20m.com

__________________
Hans "Chris" Michielssen
Old/New NAR # 19086 SR

www.oddlrockets.com
www.modelrocketbuilding.blogspot.com
http://www.nar.org/educational-reso...ing-techniques/
Your results may vary
"Nose cones roll, be careful with that."
Every spaceman needs a ray gun.
Look out - I'm the Meister Shyster!

I remember us all talking about the nosecones on the Taurus fin pods back around the time the Semroc Taurus came out. In the fourth pic, there are two Tauruses...Tauri.... two of them on the bottom row. The one on the left uses the long nosecones, but the one on the right looks like they are conical with rounded tips, not the elliptical PNC-51 that some Taurus kits had and the Semroc kit is patterned after.

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I love sanding.

Glad to be of service.

Another Centuri 'mystery' solved.

Do you still have the plans for this model?

Bob

Hi Bob,
No, I don't have plans here. They're out in Califoria, I've been in Florida now for years. I did just recently buy the parts from Semroc to build this thing again. I have a photograph but my scanner isn't very reliable. I'll see what I can do, maybe post a picture. The plans were never in print by Centuri.

Thanks again,
Hans "Chris" Michielssen

__________________
Hans "Chris" Michielssen
Old/New NAR # 19086 SR

www.oddlrockets.com
www.modelrocketbuilding.blogspot.com
http://www.nar.org/educational-reso...ing-techniques/
Your results may vary
"Nose cones roll, be careful with that."
Every spaceman needs a ray gun.
Look out - I'm the Meister Shyster!

Ah, lucky you! Your description of Centuri's plant is just what I had always imagined. All of those color kit photographs taken in the grassy "yard" always made me picture it as the field/lot of an unseen metal warehouse-type building behind the photographer's position. Not being set up for tours, I guess they didn't have an on-site retail store like Estes did? :-)

At Estes, was the Big Bertha launch area right behind that open "back porch" rocket building area with tables (kids are shown building rockets there in late 1960s catalogs)? Also, I've heard that Estes hasn't given plant tours for years. If so, their retail store is probably gone now (maybe it's used for storage or as office space nowadays?).

I can imagine Vern and Gleda driving past the plant every now and then during their travels and wondering what it would be like if they had kept the company.

__________________
Black Shire--Draft horse in human form, model rocketeer, occasional mystic, and writer, see:
http://www.lulu.com/content/paperba...an-form/8075185
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6122050
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6126511
All of my book proceeds go to the Northcote Heavy Horse Centre www.northcotehorses.com.
NAR #54895 SR

Thank you for posting those. Except for the Saturn IB instructions, I have either had or seen all of those kit instructions or catalogs at one time or another (wish I could say *have* them). Oddly enough, I was always most taken by the yellow-and-black artwork in the "Model Rocketry Manual" that was included toward the back of the Estes catalog in the late 1960s through the early 1970s.

__________________
Black Shire--Draft horse in human form, model rocketeer, occasional mystic, and writer, see:
http://www.lulu.com/content/paperba...an-form/8075185
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6122050
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6126511
All of my book proceeds go to the Northcote Heavy Horse Centre www.northcotehorses.com.
NAR #54895 SR

I do know that some of the 'grassy yard' pictures seen in Centuri literature were taken in the back yard of Lee Piester's home.

The Centuri plant did not have tours but they did have a range store which are the only interior pictures I have of the facility.

When I visited the plant, my brother and I each bought a kit. I bought a Screaming Eagle and my brother picked up a Jayhawk.

Bob

I appreciate your posted photographs and this information! Is this picture (see: http://www.ninfinger.org/rockets/no...a/72cen008.html ) also of Lee Piester's property? (It always seemed like part of a golf course to me, but that was just my guess.)

Also, do you know if the "from above" inset shot of the Astro-1 descending under its parachute on those pages was made by dropping the model from the top of the Phoenix Fire Department's training tower? (G. Harry Stine wrote in his "Handbook of Model Rocketry" that Douglas J. Malewicki [then at Cessna] and Larry Brown [then with Centuri] test-dropped Bill Stine's SAM [Standard Altitude Marker] streamers from the tower.)

I apologize for asking so many questions. Having first seen those photographs two generations ago, I never dreamed that I might learn more about the circumstances of how they were made.

__________________
Black Shire--Draft horse in human form, model rocketeer, occasional mystic, and writer, see:
http://www.lulu.com/content/paperba...an-form/8075185
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6122050
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6126511
All of my book proceeds go to the Northcote Heavy Horse Centre www.northcotehorses.com.
NAR #54895 SR

The Astro-1 launch picture is not from Lee Piester's yard. Centuri often used local public parks as locations for picture taking.

Bill Stine told me that this picture was taken in Lee Piester's back yard: http://www.ninfinger.org/rockets/no...a/80cen062.html

I have no information on the Astro-1 parachute pictures.

Bob