This one (streamer-recovered Semroc Triton with FlisKits 3-motor MicroMaxx cluster motor mount) could be a fun "joint venture" product for Semroc and FlisKits. I particularly like the fact that the above-linked EMRR review says that the flights, while reaching satisfying altitudes, were still low enough that all phases of the flights could be easily seen (rather like Big Bertha flights, just on a smaller scale!). Also, the clustered Triton made a safe (sufficiently high) and straight "engine-out" flight when one of the three MicroMaxx motors failed to ignite at launch. Maybe FlisKits and Semroc could join forces to offer these cluster mount-equipped Triton kits as, say, "Christmas Special" items?

__________________
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'm curious..................did Semroc actually have all of those engines listed in their catalog, including 'shorties', what appears to be 'shorter-than-shorties', and an 18mm 'D'? And who manufactured their engines for them?

And while I'm being curious, why don't we ever see vintage Semroc kits for sale on Ebay? I would LOVE to get one of their old Black Brant III kits!

Joe

I'm pretty sure Semroc had all those engines plus some interesting port-burning B and C offerings.
They made their own engines on their own motor making machine.
I'm pretty sure they were a pretty small operation back then and NIB kits from their original days most likely are extremely rare; obviously Carl could confirm this if true.
I have been in rocketry for well over 30 years and I think I have seen exactly one Semroc kit from the original era.

I don't know how that original Triton could have possibly had 3-engine power; there were no engines back then small enough to cram 3 in a cluster into a BT-20 sized tube; the little AVI 10mm/BT-3 sized motors were not around until several years after the original Semroc was defunct; this is another question for Carl.

__________________
When in doubt, WHACK the GAS and DITCH the brake !!!

Yes, there is such a thing as NORMAL, if you have to ask what is "NORMAL" , you probably aren't !
Failure may not be an OPTION, but it is ALWAYS a POSSIBILITY.
ALL systems are GO for MAYHEM, CHAOS, TURMOIL, FIASCOS, and HAVOC !

My take, since the picture stated "2000 feet", was that it was 3x18mm.

Doug

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YORF member #11

Doug-that was my take as well until I saw the entire rocket was only 18mm in diameter !
You can't fit 3 of anything that existed in 1970 into a BT20.

__________________
When in doubt, WHACK the GAS and DITCH the brake !!!

Yes, there is such a thing as NORMAL, if you have to ask what is "NORMAL" , you probably aren't !
Failure may not be an OPTION, but it is ALWAYS a POSSIBILITY.
ALL systems are GO for MAYHEM, CHAOS, TURMOIL, FIASCOS, and HAVOC !

Since the masters for all of their publications from that era (and Carl doesn't have any left, thanks to a hurricane that destroyed all of their tooling and printed materials in the 1970s) were "pasted-up" manually, the incorrect descriptors for the Triton kit were no doubt due to an oversight.

__________________
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

Okay

The other thought I had was that the pic had extraneous and misleading info. I wondered if the block of text center-left wasn't a vestige that inadvertently got copied from another page in the catalog, perhaps from a Ranger-like rocket.

"
THREE ENGINE POWER
TWO PARACHUTES
LARGE PAYLOAD SECTION
EASY-TO-BUILD
"

Here, I think I found the source. http://www.ninfinger.org/rockets/ca...70semroc12.html

What d'ya think?

Doug

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__________________
YORF member #11

Doug,
I think you hit the nail on the head squarely with that find.
Must have been some sort of typo of mis-set type from the Goliath.
At the bottom description it states no-chute recovery but in the sidebar it shows two chute recovery and a large payload section, which it does not have either.

__________________
When in doubt, WHACK the GAS and DITCH the brake !!!

Yes, there is such a thing as NORMAL, if you have to ask what is "NORMAL" , you probably aren't !
Failure may not be an OPTION, but it is ALWAYS a POSSIBILITY.
ALL systems are GO for MAYHEM, CHAOS, TURMOIL, FIASCOS, and HAVOC !

We did have all the engines. The Shorties and Micros were cut on a lathe to the correct size after they were made. We manufactured all our engines.

When we closed in early 1971, we did not go bankrupt. We went insolvent. Our accounts receivable were tens of thousands of dollars and our accounts payable were zero (except for salaries.) We were left with much inventory that we placed in a warehouse for the day that we could start the company back up. There was probably about 15,000 cubic feet of boxes of kits, engines, and documentation. Most of my early prized possessions (Rock-a-chute, catalogs, MRN, etc.) were in a footlocker. On April 4, 1984, a tornado hit the building and left nothing behind. Everything was scattered over a three mile stretch of mostly swamp land. I never found anything intact, including the footlocker. That killed any chance of restarting Semroc.

I did have a small box with a few copies of our documentation, some catalogs, a few chutes, several nose cones, and a sampling of the evolution of our engines. I had pulled this out of storage years before the tornado to show some friends at Telex. The stuff from that box is about the only surviving pieces of Semroc.

The engine machine and nose cone machine were stored in a separate location that was missed by the tornado, so they still survive, although neither is servicable. There is some nostalgia value to me, so I keep them anyway.

I know if I saw some of the original kits on eBay, I would buy them. When I started the mad buying spree for old kits on eBay from 1998 through 2002, I was looking for old Semroc and some of my favorite old kits from all the early companies, it became apparent that with Semroc having less than 1% of the market, there would not be any kits that would be surviving. Even finding an early RDC was almost impossible and they had much more market share than we did.

I do not have anything left from the Black Brant III. It was our last kit and for some reason, I missed pulling any of the instructions, decals, pattern sheets, or anything concerning it from storage.

Attached Thumbnails

 

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Carl McLawhorn
NAR#4717 L2
semroc.com

I only saw one of their "first go 'round" model rocket kits, an early-version Lune R-1, at Orange Blossom Hobbies in Miami in the early 1970s. (This initial version had a motor clip and no card stock simulated "conical bell" nozzle; the later version had the simulated nozzle and used friction-fit motor retention.)

Semroc Astronautics really has risen again, Phoenix-like, from nothing. Sheryl told me that after the company went insolvent, they stored all of the tooling (including their "Mabel" machine), leftover parts, and publications in a barn, which in the 1970s was destroyed by a hurricane that scattered everything all over their county, and nothing from it was ever found. Someone gave Carl a Semroc motor that he had, and that is all that remains from those earliest years of the company, besides the scan of the May 1970 issue of Astronautic Modeler on the Ninfinger Productions web site. I admire that family for their persistence and for refusing to give up! [NOTE: I stand corrected on the details of the company's demise in its initial form, thanks to Carl's reply just after this one!]

__________________
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