Enerjet Brochure and Shock Cord Fastener
 

Attached are scans of a four page Enerjet brochure covering the then new Enerjet line. I picked this up last summer and it is a brochure that I personally had never seen before. Thought that the Enerjet fans here would like to see it.

It is an 11 x 17 sheet folded in half providing for four pages.

On the cover page is Larry Brown holding a Pteradactyl glider. The other person at the launch rack I do not know.

On page two (inside left page as it is opened) shows a fairly young Grant Boyd with an Aerodart on an LIA-77 launcher. I understand that Grant passed away in May, 2018 from Parkinson's Disease in Arizona. I never met Grant, but it seems he was one of the key personnel that kept Centuri going through the mid-to latter 70s. He was R&D Director at Centuri from what I recall. I always enjoyed his material in the Rocket Times newsletters that Centuri published back in those days. The other pages show some interesting photos of Enerjet product.

The final item is a scan of an Enerjet shock cord fastener. For those who were accustomed to the standard Centuri fastener from the very early 70s, it is interesting to see how much larger the Enerjet version is. Strangely, Enerjet kits also used 1/8" elastic shock cord like their smaller Centuri siblings. One would think with a fastener this big, they would have jumped up to 3/16", if not 1/4" material. From the Enerjet kits I have, not so.


Earl

Thank-you, Earl. I have never seen this brochure before either. Back in those days I very much preferred the flat-lying, streamlined Centuri shock cord fastener to the Estes tri-fold. These days I prefer variations of the LOC-style mount, but I would again use the Centuri shock cord mount in my model rockets if it was available.

I have not seen that brochure either and I thought I had previously seen all the Enerjet docs.

Earl,

Thanks for sharing. Fun to look at old marketing material and pictures — especially seeing something like this for the first time.

Thanks for sharing the downloads!

I wonder how it slipped by us all these YORF years? :confused:

Thanks, Earl!

Wonder what year it was from ?
Enerjet engines were first available in 1971.
The first and only catalog of Enerjet kits was 1972 although the products were available through at least 1976 and possibly early 1977 through Centuri.
A local hobby shop in my area had a huge stock of boxed Enerjet engines available through the 80's but they were always expensive for the time.
8 bucks for an F engine in 1987 was considered very costly.

Best I can tell, this must be from around the late summer or early fall of '72.

At the top of page two of the brochure, the text makes reference to "At this year's internationals....". Though the word 'internationals' is a bit of a misnomer in this context, I think they are referring to NARAM (14, I believe), which that year had been held in Seattle. There, Enerjets were given a fairly big run of demonstration flights, several of which were record attempts (see Enerjet News #3 from Sept 1972 here: http://www.spacemodeling.org/jimz/ejn03.htm).

Pretty sure that is the event being referenced in this particular Enerjet brochure. So yeah, I think late summer or so of 1972 would be a pretty good guess.

Anyone here have any first hand (or even second hand) information about working with or around Grant Boyd? I've heard a number of anecdotal information or stories about other Centuri staffers over the years, but I don't think I've ever heard any about Grant really, save for a quick story from a former Centuri motor plant staffer who went out once with Grant to test fire an Enerjet cluster rocket outside Phoenix. That's about it. Any other stories from or about Grant would be appreciated.

Earl

Very interesting!

This seems to be a "dealer" brochure; it really plays up the marketing and packaging of the line.

FWIW:

The one Enerjet product I bought was a Nike Ram. I bought it direct; it was probably the most expensive model I'd bought at the time. I had the cost of the model, but luckily found a dollar bill which helped with the shipping!

It came in a plastic bag, not that magnificent box. Perhaps the direct sales used cheaper packaging?


I only got one copy, likely the first, of the "monthly" newsletter.

Unfortunately, Grant Boyd passed away in May 2018. I didn't get a chance to work with him, but he left behind a rich treasure of "Life at Centuri" in the Estes files that I went through when I worked there.

Matt

Matt-

Thanks for the post. Yes, I was sad to hear he had passed away when I heard or read it sometime about a year ago or so now. Wow, would have loved to have read through some of those files! Was that “Life at Centuri” an official set of files by name, or is that your ‘label’ on the body of work that was transferred to Estes from Phoenix?

Earl

P.S. - Received the instruction set last week. Thanks for following up with that.

Judging by the hair color and stature, I can almost bet the "other person" in the picture is Bob DelPrincipe. Bob had a hand in a lot of Centuri designs like the Fighter Fleet.

I found this Grant Boyd business card going through some stuff the other day. (See below)

The Centuri Shock Cord Fasteners were great - for a while! The peel and stick adhesive could loosen from the inside of the body tubes.
Centuri had to add an addendum to their kits saying to press the fastener back down with the back end of a pencil (the eraser) before flight.

Heaven knows I'll never forget the Enerjet demo flight they did at NARAM-13. The model just teleported off the pad.

Chris-

Do you recall approximately the year you received the business card from Grant?

Yeah, those Centuri shock cord fasteners could be a bit tricky. You really had to make sure that bottom end (the end closest to the motor mount) was down good, else hot ejection gases could eventually loosen that edge, causing it to peel upwards. But, in general I too preferred them over the tri-fold mount.

I remember in past email discussions with you when you talked about having applied for a job with Centuri and hanging out with their group at a NARAM or two. During those times, did you have much (or any) interaction with Grant?

Earl

I bet! My closest equivalent was flying an F50(101) Silver Streak for the first time after never flying anything more than an D12.

A F50 Silver Streak is a BIG jump from a D12.
Back in the 80's I flew a bunch of Composite Dynamics E20s, F40s, and F45s along with some Crown F67s.
Those were huge compared to D12s and were reliable unlike more common FSI F100s and E60s.

Great motors! I flew quite a few back in the day. (Along with the G and H equivalent, although those coudl cato spectacularly.)

My first "big boy" motor was a G80, flow in an AAA American Dream in 1988. WOW. That flight really got me hooked on the big stuff.

My experience was somewhat similar. I went from flying nothing bigger than a D12 to flying a 4” NCR Patriot with a G64 reload at NARCON ‘92.

But back to RocketFlite motors ... at LDRS 13 I bought a lot of Silver Streaks. A few F50, and I flew a number of G160 and H220. Some of those may not have been Silver Streaks. I remember buying them from Ross Dunton of Magnum. He had a footlocker full of them in his truck. :)

I took at least one each F, G, and H home. The Silver Streaks were nice night launch motors. One thing I discovered is that they did not age well. Colorado is dry, and I store motors in my basement, but one had a spectacular cato at night a few years later.

We seem to think alike. My first F50 Silver Streak was in an AAA Cherokee - G. I probably flew that model more than all my other mid and high power rockets combined on anything from E through G. I even put a D12-3 in it once it got old and beat up. The chute opened about 15 ft off the ground. :D

[QUOTE=Earl]Matt-
Was that “Life at Centuri” an official set of files by name, or is that your ‘label’ on the body of work that was transferred to Estes from Phoenix?

Earl

That's my name for it. There was a lot of neat stuff they worked on.

Matt

Do you think that this ASJ Insulation tape https://www.mcmaster.com/76755a67 is the same stuff Enerjet and Centuri made the shock cord mounts from? Should I buy some and see if my K40 laser cutter can handle it?

Go for it!

Could be; I wish they had a better photo of the material itself. That on the web page does not really show enough detail of the material to verify.

And the material Centuri used varied a bit over the years also. Sometimes, the foil layer was the prominent layer visible and other times the material seemed to be predominated by the paper layer. But in each case it was a mixture of foil, paper, and filaments of what appeared to be Fiberglas threads or nylon threads.

Earl

Hello, Earl !

I have long-suspected that the material that Centuri used was either some sort of heavy-duty packing / strapping tape . . . OR some type of HVAC Duct tape.

Dave F.

Earl,

"Adapt & Overcome" . . . One must be resourceful, because "Failure Is Not An Option" !


https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Venture+...f=bl_dp_s_web_0

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Venture+...ef=nb_sb_noss_2

https://www.amazon.com/Venture-Tape...5KQ/ref=sr_1_12

https://www.amazon.com/FSK-Foil-Scr...BSM/ref=sr_1_10

One example of a SIMILAR product . . .



Dave F.

The Nashua tape roll photo you attached looks pretty close to the material used for the late 70s Centuri SCFs.

As commented, the material Centuri used over the years changed somewhat. Even the shape of the SCF itself changed some too.

The very first version of the their SCF was a little shorter and a bit wider. These first versions had a top metallic surface with somewhat tight filament lines running through it. These were first used starting sometime in the summer of 1970, best I’ve been able to pinpoint.

By about ‘72, the design had been lengthened a bit and made somewhat more narrow. I think this was done to make it a bit easier to get into smaller body tubes. The material used was a bit different too. The top layer is more of a whitish, paper-like covering, but has a foil layer underneath. The filament lines are there too, and maybe a bit more dense.

By the late 70s, the shape is the same longer, narrower design, but the material is once again a top shiny metallic layer, but the filaments are wider spaced, much like the Nashua tape roll in the large image you attached.

I’ll attach a photo of the three in just a moment.

Earl

...and here's the photo. From left to right: first version, 1970; second version, circa 1972; third version, circa late 70s (didn't have one handy outside the package). The filaments in the paper covered middle version are hard to see, but are maybe a bit more dense than the first version.

That reminds me. When I was building HPR rockets, I’d use a patch of fiberglass drywall cloth, covering a Kevlar loop, with the knot poking out the aft end of the patch. I’d then flood the patch with epoxy. From there I’d affix my replaceable shock cordto the exposed loop. Those never came off. One roll from Home Depot was probably enough for 500 rocket or more. :)

If anyone wants a piece to sample, I could send you one. My roll is only about 1/2 gone. Most was used to repair long cracks in walls ...