Sterling kits

[david smith]

Anyone know who has the rights to the sterling kits? Just curious, specifically the Carrier stuff.

Thanks
David

[John Rist]

If the S-1 Ringmaster is a clue:  Nobody and everybody.   

[Dave_Trible]

Likely nobody still alive.  Anyway-there isn't enough money involved to pay a lawyer.  Any protections would have to be filed or registered and those costs are out of the league for our hobby, and long since expired for companies that old.

Dave 

[Tony Drago]

Estes acquired the Sterling line. Many years ago. Approximately early 90's. Like we can all see. Nothing really happened after they acquired Sterling.

[De Hill]

Didn't they kit the Stuntin Ringmaster? (non OTS legal)

[Brett Buck]

Estes acquired the Sterling line. Many years ago. Approximately early 90's. Like we can all see. Nothing really happened after they acquired Sterling.

   And, for what little it is worth, "Estes" is actually the Centuri corporation/company. I think.

     Brett

[Dan McEntee]

   And, for what little it is worth, "Estes" is actually the Centuri corporation/company. I think.

     Brett

     I seem to remember a "merger" or one buying the other, just from reading magazines of the time, as far as the rocket end went. Estes put out the Super Stuntin' Ringmaster, which was the same as the old S1-A kit with sheeted leading edges, some 1/2A kits of Ringmaster versions, some Star Wars 1/2A stuff, and a few rubber powered f/f kits that were reboxed from the original box art. This was the same time period that they bought Cox also and moved the company to Colorado, and we all know where that went to from there. Walter Umland at  Builright/Flyright repopped the Spitfire Stunter, and I think did limited runs of the T-Square and maybe even the Winder combat ships. That's about all I can recall at this time.
  Type at you later,
   Dan McEntee

[Brett Buck]

     I seem to remember a "merger" or one buying the other, just from reading magazines of the time, as far as the rocket end went.

    That, I do more-or-less know - Science education supplier Damon bought first Centuri (original model rocket and LMR company in Phoenix, also with an industrial rocketry supplier RDC) in about 1968, then Estes (Penrose), and ran them both as "separate companies" to the consumer.

     Centuri, the original serious rocketry company to Estes kids educational company, then got progressively positioned in the "lowball" cheap alternative, until at one point, Centuri catalogs were printed on *newsprint*. This more-or-less ran all the old hands out of Centuri, Enerjet/RDC was put out of business, and some of the people run out of Centuri started other companies, the biggest being Quest.

    Others are SSRS (Small Sounding Rocket Systems, which was a Enerjet/RDC redux, maybe even with the original owner Irv Wait) and Composite Dynamics (the forerunner to Aerotech). The former Coaster/Minimax people went on to form FSI, and various other people who were former Enerjet customers started ISP (industrial Solid Propulsion) and eventually Aerotech, who are now allied somehow with Quest and have the old Enerjet IP somehow.

     Estes and Centuri ran as separate companies while model rocketry wound down through the 70s, finally Centuri stopped existing as a separate consumer company in the early 80s - a pretty sad end to what was former the Cadillac of rocket companies.



     Eventually (and Larry Renger and  Mike Pratt worked for the combined company and could clarify), a former toy company executive Barry Tunick bought all of these limping along businesses - Sterling, Cox, Estes, Centuri, and probably others, and at least partly to try to cash in on Star Wars prequel merchandising. This was not well-received by almost anyone on any side and I am sure that it did not give the sort of return on investment he expected.

      I am not sure what if anything happened after Tunick, or if Tunick got a clue, but at least now, Estes is running like the baby-boomer hobby company it probably should have been all along, Cox got sold off for scrap, etc. I don't know what happened to Sterling IP.

   

    Brett

[phil c]

I built a number of model rockets.  Given that the aerodynamics were pretty rudimentary and easy to adjust, it was very much a piece of cake, even for a 13 year old.

I finally gave up in high school, when a well-flown, simple 3 fin engine carrier rocket lost a fin right after launch.  The rocket laid over and flew down the field about 100 yards.  Didn't scare anyone else but me and my buddy.  I quit rockets.  It was kinda expensive(motors), and not really entertaining like stunt flying and combat flying.  At the time it was fairly easy to get pretty good in just a couple dozen flights.  Good enough to have fun flying and competing.

[MikeyPratt]

Brett,
Yeah I had a small pert in that (very small part) and remember things were changed just so they were different and could be called Estes.  The S1 is a good example, it should have been left alone it would have sold more.  The people that made these suggestions didn’t know what they were doing.  Barry always wanted to be a big toy company like Hasbro & Milton  that’s why they signed in withe Lucas and flopped.

Cox engines were another segment that should have left alone, they made changes to tooling to speed up production (it did somewhat) but then they started dropping parts of the engine line (TD .010, & .020, then .049 & 051 and .09, killer Bee, Texaco, Dragonfly, and so on, on, on.  Pretty soon all they had was a very low power production .049 engine that barely had enough to fly the redesigned PT 19 let alone the Hyper Viper.

Just my opinion, but left alone, they would have still been selling engines and kits even at reduced sales numbers.  But the engines would have run way better.  I (sort of) enjoyed mine time while I was there, but it was frustrating to say the least, most of the time.

Mike

[Brett Buck]

Brett,
Yeah I had a small pert in that (very small part) and remember things were changed just so they were different and could be called Estes.  The S1 is a good example, it should have been left alone it would have sold more.  The people that made these suggestions didn’t know what they were doing.  Barry always wanted to be a big toy company like Hasbro & Milton  that’s why they signed in withe Lucas and flopped.

   Exactly, Tunick never "got it" - fundamentally misunderstood the market, treated it like another toy company, instead of the baby-boomer nostalgia hobby thing it is/needs to be. Damon also blew it killing Centuri/Enerjet/RDC - they could have made a mint as kids aged out of model rocketry because while the model rocket business/space age was winding down, they had absolutely everything in hand to take advantage of what were now grown-ups.

     That's what Centuri was - the grown-up version of Vern Estes' model rocket company (based on the safety crusade from Orville Carlisle and G. Harry Stine).    Enerjet was the perfect company to invent LMR and HPR - the few RDC/Enerjet products that made it under the Model Rocket Safety Code were just the very low end of the original RDC line - I recall an RDC catalog that had the one thing I could have purchased, the Enerjet 8, as this tiny little motor on the end of the line, next to a line of *huge* engines that would still be impressive today - except it was 1967 instead of 2005.

    It took less than 5 years after Damon wrecked Centuri/Enerjet for the first copycat companies to appear, just in time to fight it out with various fire marshals and the NAR since most products were far in excess of the nearly universal Safety Code. Had they left it alone, or spun it off, no one would ever have heard of Aerotech or ISP - copycat companies of Enerjet and RDC, by a former Enerjet customer.

    Estes looks like they are mostly doing the right thing with model rocketry now - reissuing limited-run old Centuri models for boomers, a few really good new things, like the Little Joe I- that was a "Design of the Month" winner in the Enerjet Times in about 1972. Unfortunately the fit/workmanship, farmed out to the Far East, is less-that-desired. In this case, the old diecut parts fit *better* than the new laser-cut parts.

    Somewhat relevant to this thread, numerous "retro" companies also exist, making either direct named copies of old Estes and Centuri kits, or very vaguely-disguised version with slightly altered names. Semroc is an old name that is now a retro-Estes/Centuri company. Someone owns the IP/copyright, but like most things in this hobby, it runs on copyright violation/indifference.

     Brett

   

[Scott Richlen]

The problem with model rockets was that the flights were all generally the same: you lit the fuse and they went up, the parachute popped, and then they floated down.  And the next umpteenth flights were just like that.  I liked my little Musciano planes a lot more.  There are an unlimited number of ways you can crash them (and I'm talking not deliberately!!    )

So, when I was maybe a Junior in high school,  one day I dusted off my old Estes rocket which hadn't been flown in years, took the parachute out of the nose, loaded in a motor, and then proceeded to fill the nose with black powder (or whatever it is that they use) that a buddy of mine and I had gathered by slitting open a bundle of fire-crackers.  That night my brothers and I went over to Bonner Park, stuck a piece of music wire in the ground, slid the rocket down the wire, lit the fuse of the rocket, and ran like hell!

Up it went - just like every previous boring flight.

But then.....

KAA-BOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!

We sat over in the alley behind our house and watched to see what would happen next...

Most of the cops in town converged on Bonner Park trying to find out what had blown up and who did it.

When we went back in the house our folks were like: "what are you boys laughing about?  and what was that big explosion?"

Shoulder shrugs and more laughing.

[GallopingGhostler]

There used to be a Sterling historic information site operated independent of the company intended on preserving the history the company and its models, model plans, patterns, artwork, etc.. Unfortunately, it became a victim of the times and faded away may be 5 to 7 years ago.

Toward the end of declining profitability, there was a mysterious fire that burned down much of Sterling's storage and manufacturing facility. It must have been not long after 1994, because I have the pricing list from one of the last kits I bought from them. That was the final death knell to the company.

Estes as far as I know bought some of their intellectual property (plans, patterns, etc.) but not all.

[Scott Richlen]

  there was a mysterious fire 

If you ever lived in Montana you were well aware of many "mysterious flres" that occurred in downtown Butte as the open pit became so large it started swallowing what was once downtown.

My in-laws lived there and when my father-in-law was transfered they put their home up for sale with little chance of finding a buyer.  Their neighbor suggested they turn on the gas and take a long weekend off well out of town...

[Peter in Fairfax, VA]

Scott,

Here's a typical Missoula home:  $700K for a 4 bedroom on an acre with septic tank.  Maybe real estate was less expensive at one point, but not now.  Lot of million dollar offerings.

thanks for opening that topic,

Peter

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/4721-Lois-Ln-Missoula-MT-59808/54488469_zpid/

[Scott Richlen]

Peter: that was years before the "Great California Migration."  They keep escaping to Montana and buying up everything, thus driving up housing prices (and the cost of everything else.)  After crapping up California, they are now working their "magic" on Montana.

[Steve Helmick]

The problem with model rockets was that the flights were all generally the same: you lit the fuse and they went up, the parachute popped, and then they floated down.  And the next umpteenth flights were just like that.  I liked my little Musciano planes a lot more.  There are an unlimited number of ways you can crash them (and I'm talking not deliberately!!    )

So, when I was maybe a Junior in high school,  one day I dusted off my old Estes rocket which hadn't been flown in years, took the parachute out of the nose, loaded in a motor, and then proceeded to fill the nose with black powder (or whatever it is that they use) that a buddy of mine and I had gathered by slitting open a bundle of fire-crackers.  That night my brothers and I went over to Bonner Park, stuck a piece of music wire in the ground, slid the rocket down the wire, lit the fuse of the rocket, and ran like hell!

Up it went - just like every previous boring flight.

But then.....

KAA-BOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!

We sat over in the alley behind our house and watched to see what would happen next...

Most of the cops in town converged on Bonner Park trying to find out what had blown up and who did it.

When we went back in the house our folks were like: "what are you boys laughing about?  and what was that big explosion?"

Shoulder shrugs and more laughing.

That reminded me of an episode with a weather balloon, an A&W Rootbeer jug, some lye and a collection of scrap aluminum foil and such...long before aluminum cans were invented! Fuse of some sort...no "Kaboom", but a HUGE fireball.  Steve

[doug coursey]

That reminded me of an episode with a weather balloon, an A&W Rootbeer jug, some lye and a collection of scrap aluminum foil and such...long before aluminum cans were invented! Fuse of some sort...no "Kaboom", but a HUGE fireball.  Steve

We use to do the same thing with the ballons......radio said there was mysterious explosions on the southside in Miami

[GallopingGhostler]

Not to be outdone is an incident that occurred 15 years ago. The Air Force allowed me to ship my 1987 LS650 Suzuki Savage to Kadena Air Base on Okinawa. There, I got it titled and registered in Japan. (The bike was an overkill as I could go fast anywhere on the island in 3rd gear! ) The Savage is lean tuned for emissions, so it had a tendency to backfire, but being muffled, wasn't so bad.

It just happened that for one reason or another, I never bothered to check the tightness of the bolts holding the header pipe to the large single cylinder, they had worked themselves loose. While passing by Kadena High School on the way to work, it backfired a couple times while maneuvering the motorcycle through the wide turn by the school. However with the leaking exhaust, it was quite a bit louder than normal. When I returned home, I discovered the loose bolts.

That evening at dinner, I found out from my daughter, who was a student at the school, they had a lock-down, someone in the neighborhood had discharged a firearm a couple times. I asked her about when did this occur. The time she told me was about the same time that I had passed the high school on my motorcycle.

Unbeknownst to me, somehow, my lack of maintenance on the bike became a potential act of terror! But, my prior military training kicked in, I kept my mouth shut! They never knew!