What colors/scheme were the real Arcons?
 

Photos of the Arcon are very scarce. I've found three and none of them are clear on the paint scheme or pattern. Since they're black and white photos—no color is apparent. In what looks like the manufacturer's photo, it's not painted.

Does anyone have information on what these rockets really looked like? Educated guesses?

These are the two best photos I've been able to find.

Peter Alway published a scale data packet on the Arcon that is in one of his books, which NARTS (NAR Technical Services) carry. He covered the Arcon round in your photos and another round that was painted in the Arcas-style (white with red trim and black lettering) "ARC corporate paint job."

Thanks blackshire, an intense search of "Peter Alway" turned up the first paint scheme (the one in the photos above) that I've seen. Looks to be black and bare metal with those two white side pods, whatever they may be. This is about what I'm looking at:

Composited from a scale drawing, the above photo and a very, very small preview image from P.A.'s supplement.

I think I'll reserve the Arca's "corporate scheme" for some time down the road—should I ever build one. The Arcon scheme is uninspired, but it looks fairly industrial.

On a side note: I find it curious that a sounding rocket as small, unsuccessful and as little used as the Arcon, should live on, almost continuously, as a model rocket. Very odd.

It's too bad that Landru was destroyed, or you could ask him. :D

Thank you. I'll be here all week.

Stay in school.

You've lost me. But then, it doesn't take much.

Star Trek (TOS), #22, The Return Of the Archons :D

I suppose it would have been funnier if it was spelled the same way.

I wonder if the refrain of Landru's hood-wearing goons ("You will be absorbed.") was the inspiration for the Borg's trademark threat/promise ("You will be assimilated.")?

If memory serves, the white pods were antennas.I think the Arcon is a perennial scale model rocket for three reasons:

[1] The world's second model rocket kit was a scale Arcon kit produced in the late 1950s by MMI (Model Missiles, Inc.), after their Aerobee-Hi kit was released. MMI's Arcon kit did not come with the finless booster. In the early 1960s, Centuri produced a larger Arcon kit (also lacking the booster) and a two-stage "semi-scale" variant of their Arcon kit called the Arcon-Hi (which never existed as a full-scale vehicle) that had large fins on its booster (Semroc offers "Retro-Repro" reproductions of both Centuri kits).

[2] Like the IQSY Tomahawk (which is also a common scale model rocket despite the fact that only four rounds of the full-scale rocket are known to have been flown), the Arcon was a vehicle for which scale data was readily available.

[3] The Arcon was a simple vehicle, which makes it a good beginner's scale project and makes for a high-performance model. (I do not look down on "simple scalers" such as the Arcon, as I like "boring" 3FNC/4FNC model rockets because simplicity is beautiful, and because they *look* like rockets.)

I agree. I like building regular rockets for the reasons you stated. I also like retro-futuristic rockets for almost the opposite reasons. They tend to be outlandish in an old-fashioned way and I appreciate nice curves (on whatever).

Antenna pods, eh? They'd be easy enough to make and they'd add a bit of interest and differentiate it from some other, similar rockets. I may do that.

Again, thanks for your insights and the Alway tip.

The Arcon's clean, uncluttered lines and tapered boat-tail should enable your scale model of it to fly high even on lower-impulse motors. Also, it should have enough excess stability margin to be CHAD-staged ("CHeap And Dirty" staging, using just a booster motor with no fins; the British Skylark 7 and Skylark 12 sounding rockets also used finless boosters).The folks who select the photographs for the Mischka Press Draft Horse Calendars certainly have a good aesthetic sense for depicting draft mares' curves... For rockets, I certainly concur--the V-2 and its form-inspired descendants (the American MX-774 and the Soviet R-2) do have the classic "Rocketship" look.They could even be functional antennas. You could build an Estes Transroc 11 meter band (CB band) transmitter using one of the Transroc version schematics here (see: http://www.ninfinger.org/rockets/Tr...wnersManual.pdf ) and connect it to the antennas through a simple capacitor-and-coil "L-match" antenna matching network. The antennas could be utilized as either a radiator-and-counterpoise set (essentially a dipole antenna) or as two radiating elements (connected in parallel to the transmitter's antenna output) worked against another counterpoise (foil or metal mesh wrapped around the inside or outside of the body tube but not directly beneath the radiating elements).You're most welcome.