Rocketeers fuel spare-time passion with raw enthusiasm

Amateur rocketeers gathered at Lucerne Dry Lake in San Bernardino County, Calif., for the twice-a-year ROCstock, an event sponsored by the Rocketry Organization of California. (Carlos Chavez/Los Angeles Times)

LUCERNE VALLEY, Calif. - The pickup with "Official Rocket Recovery Vehicle" on its side bounced across the rutted dry lake bed kicking up silt. Andy Tryon glanced over his shoulder at his baby cradled in back.

In a few minutes, his crew would gently place the Desert Hawk on the launch pad and arm it with an igniter.

Showtime, and Tryon was nervous.

The rocket represented three months' labor. He needed to solve the engineering flaw that doomed the Desert Hawk's three previous launches. The camouflage paint job alone took two weeks. On the rocket's fins were inspirational quotes from the Bible, Shakespeare, the heavy metal band Molly Hatchet, and the theme song from the television show "Star Trek: Enterprise."

"There's a heck of a lot of trial and error in this hobby," said Tryon, 41, of Victorville. Tryon drives a forklift for Wal-Mart and has the earnestness of a Trekkie. "We refer to it as the bug; either it bites you or it doesn't. But when it bites, it bites in a big way."

Tryon's goal is to make a name for himself in the competitive world of model rocketry. If that conjures up images of a junior high science fair, think again.

The Desert Hawk is 10 feet tall and weighs 126 pounds. Launching it required high-altitude clearance from the Federal Aviation Administration. It's fueled by a mixture of ammonium perchlorate and synthetic rubber - known as APCP, it's essentially what powers the space shuttle.

What was once a simple boyhood hobby spawned by the Cold War's space race has transformed into extreme rocketry, a subculture dominated by middle-aged men who harness technology, testosterone, and their credit cards in pursuit of thrust and altitude.

"The final result of all the work is that you light a motor and there's a big old bunch of noise, smoke, and flames," said Richard "Wedge" Oldham, who lives in Los Angeles and builds replicas of Cold War-era missiles that break the sound barrier. "That appeals to guys."

It also drew the attention of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, which in recent years has tightened regulations on the purchase and storage of APCP because the agency classifies it as an explosive. Even relatively small amounts of APCP can require a federal permit and a background check.

Oldham, a wiry 50-year-old with steel-blue eyes, was among scores of rocketeers at the federally managed Lucerne Dry Lake east of Victorville for the biannual ROCstock, an event sponsored by the Rocketry Organization of California in November. As Tryon readied the Desert Hawk for launch, Oldham drew a crowd simply by displaying a motor he used last year to propel a 700-pound model of a Nike Ajax missile - without a warhead - to 14,740 feet in 30 seconds.

Oldham stumbled onto extreme rocketry like many of his peers did - in middle age when he introduced his childhood hobby to his teenage son.

"As a kid in the early '60s, when the US got into the space race, I was totally enthralled," he said. "Eventually the Navy and girls got in the way."

Unbeknownst to Oldham, model rocketry had super-sized during the years. It was no longer just a kid's game. His son eventually grew bored with rockets. Oldham grew more intense.

"I wake up thinking about rockets, and I go to bed thinking about rockets," said Oldham, a software engineer. "It's not a hobby. It's a passion and obsession."

The science behind a homemade rocket that can travel more than 70 miles and rub shoulders with space - as one did in 2004 - has a lot in common with an actual missile. There is one key difference: Because model rockets don't have guidance systems, they have to fly relatively straight or the owner risks a long hunt to retrieve it - or something far worse.