Well, I took pity on a couple boxes of vintage wrecked/unfinished rockets from about 1970/71. They are all repairable, some need more repair than others. So through the rest of the winter I'm going to restore them to flight operation and paint in the spring. I'll post pictures as I progress.

First up are the Centuri Recruiter and Quasar.

The Recruiter was missing 4 of the 6 fins, but all clean breaks. Made replacements using one of the two remaining as a template. Overall it's in good shape, I'm going to mask off the decals and repaint the white to make it look good.

The Quasar was in pretty bad shape. It appears to be an early issue, as it predates the plastic nose with a balsa one and paper canopy. All three ram jet pods were missing and 1 fin. The remaining 2 fins were detached, but unbroken. I cut a new fin and replaced the ram jets with parts from Semroc. Not sure about painting it, 1) just paint the replaced parts with some touch up, or 2) repaint it completely and use replacement decals. Some of it's charm to me is the well used look, but the Quasar is just too cool, I'd love to have it looking it's best.

Attached Thumbnails

   

__________________
Tim

"You know, it, uh, won't fly unless somebody pushes the button." From the movie October Sky.

I am SAM # 0167
NAR 98303 Southwestern Ohio Rocketry Association (SORA) #624
https://www.rocketryohio.com

Sounds great Tim, be sure to post the "after" pics!

Next up I think is a Centuri Chuter-Two, the 3 inch cardboard payload tube was missing, which I replaced with a vintage CPT-82 per a suggestion in the Chuter-Two's plans. I don't think the ST-8 nose cone in the box is the right one, I think it needs to be longer, but close enough for me. It was missing one fin and the other 3 were attached upside down, I carefully removed and reattached them.

Attached Thumbnails

 

__________________
Tim

"You know, it, uh, won't fly unless somebody pushes the button." From the movie October Sky.

I am SAM # 0167
NAR 98303 Southwestern Ohio Rocketry Association (SORA) #624
https://www.rocketryohio.com

Looking good so far. ( I love vintage boxlots, beat up old goodies are fun )


Struggle with the repait question myself - bought a large batch of old Centuri stuff a couple years back, still unsure on many - some are well built but never got recovery systems or lugs ( but nice paint, think the owner used the tower I also got ) .

others are flyable, with so-so paint, but I wonder ' do you repaint one where the original vintage fins can be seen under the paint - ie: root edge printing is marked on my Arcon-Hi, so.... although I love my stuff looking better-then-new, should it be saved for historical sake ?

I know up to the builder/ owner, but a good question for the purists...

Keep posting, good stuff.

~ AL

PS: interesting, the recruiter with the old MPC decals.

did you build these originally ? eBay ? local score ? ( wish I could find more to restore, not as easy as we'd like :P )

~ AL

These were not mine, they were an eBay purchase. I know what you mean about seeing the printing on the balsa fin roots, sort of adds historical authenticity to it, you could see it on the Recruiter fins and I think a little on the Quasar until I added the fillets. As for the decals on the Recruiter, there was one or two MPC rockets in the box. I know I could clone these and have them look shinny and new, but I like bringing life back to old junk. Me and my dad used to restore old (but not antique) trucks together, never made much money, but we had a lot of fun doing it.

My 8 year old daughter made me laugh about this purchase. We were talking about buying and selling things and she suddenly said , "Daddy, people will sell almost anything, even garbage. Like this box of rockets, it was someone's garbage, and you bought it."

__________________
Tim

"You know, it, uh, won't fly unless somebody pushes the button." From the movie October Sky.

I am SAM # 0167
NAR 98303 Southwestern Ohio Rocketry Association (SORA) #624
https://www.rocketryohio.com

Did a little investigation on the decals, the US flag on the fin, the USA with the blue stars, and red and blue stripes on the main body tube, and the checkered role pattern are Centuri decals. Centuri had a U.S. Flag decal sheet (DC-35) with them in various sizes. Centuri also had color stripes decal sheets (DC-29) which might be where the red stripes just above the ST-13 to ST-8 balsa reducer came from. Not sure about the decal on the gray portion of the nose cone yet.

http://www.ninfinger.org/rockets/no...a/73cen068.html

__________________
Tim

"You know, it, uh, won't fly unless somebody pushes the button." From the movie October Sky.

I am SAM # 0167
NAR 98303 Southwestern Ohio Rocketry Association (SORA) #624
https://www.rocketryohio.com