Amateur rocketeers reach for the sky with model rockets
By John M. McGuire St. Louis Post Dispatch
03/30/2003
ELSBERRY, Mo. - Whooooooooooooooosch. Off it went, wiggling at first, almost like a twirling banana, belching out a plume of black smoke as it roared upward.
No, we're not in Iraq.
When the rocket reached about 1,500 feet, it began arching toward the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway tracks running along the eastern edge of this town on Highway 79, the roadway to Mark Twain country just north of here.
Actually, Hannibal native Samuel Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain, would have loved to observe something like this and meet this "very small niche of geeks and nerds," a description used by one member of the St. Louis Rocketry Association. No doubt, Twain would have written about it, too.
The rocket didn't even come close to landing on the railroad tracks. That's because the launch site here is in a massive cornfield, with the crops hacked away. If you squint, you'd swear you were looking at a moonscape with rockets on it.
For weeks, weather had postponed the monthly launch of the association, which has about 50 members. These geeks and nerds, as club member Dan Schneider calls them, are middle-aged men with respectable day jobs, though they look forward to the opportunity to act like characters in a Disney outer-space movie.
Schneider, for example, is a computer nerd who's been launching model rockets for about four years. For six years in the Navy, he was Poseidon C3 missile technician on nuclear submarines such as the U.S.S. Kamehameha.
Others are Boeing engineers, Pharmacia chemists, e-mail administrators, aerospace workers and physicians. Former appliance dealer Steve Mizerany's son Steve is a member.
There's also a Roman Catholic priest, the Rev. Jay Alvarez, a chaplain at the West Pine Center in Kirkwood, who said, "I never joined any group because there's so many regulations."
"Heads up"
On this second Saturday in March not all the whooosches worked so well. Some of the launches went haywire, such as a two-stage missile that burst apart. This caused the mission-control fellow, Jeff McCoy of Webster Groves, to shout: "Coming in ballistic, heads up." McCoy is a maintenance technician for Ascent Corp. in Creve Coeur and vice president of the St. Louis Rocketry Association.
The Elsberry launches, usually held on Saturdays, depend on the weather. Wind must be no stronger than 20 miles an hour, the sky either clear or partly cloudy.
On this particular Saturday, the rockets rarely were sent higher than 1,500 feet because it became too windy.
"We didn't want to go too high because we'd have to walk five miles to get our rockets," Schneider said.
In Elsberry, model rockets are limited by the Federal Aviation Administration to an altitude of 6,500 feet AGL (above ground level), with an occasional "timed window" to 14,500 feet if the FAA sees no aircraft coming. Elsewhere, such as in the deserts of the Southwest, model rockets have clearance to above 25,000 feet.
"You will someday hear of amateur rocket enthusiasts reaching space if Homeland Security, war or some other unforeseen event doesn't shut us down first," Schneider said. Model-rocket people are worried about the future of their organization in light of Sept. 11 and the Iraq war.
"Born again" hobbyists
"We're going to tear it down," association president Bruce Weidner said at 3:20 p.m. Strong wind out of Mark Twain country had created a growing haziness and caused Weidner and Mark Grant, a Columbia, Mo., physician, to cease working on a new launching device.
A two-stage misfire occurred just after McCoy's daughter Amanda, 13, a pupil at Hixson Middle School in Webster Groves, called out, "The sky is clear. The range is clear, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, blastoff."
Amanda, blowing bubble-gum bubbles and sitting behind a public-address microphone with rocket-launch switches nearby, seems to use her father's hobby as way to make a little money.
"Hey, I'll go get it for you for $2," she shouted at Don Hanson, whose rocket, after a successful launch, floated back to Earth under its parachute.
Hanson, owner of Lakeshire Electric, smiled and said, "It's only a 50-cent drop."
McCoy and Weidner are among those called born-again model rocketeers. They first started when they were youngsters; McCoy was a sixth-grader at an Indianapolis YMCA. But when their adolescent years came along with cars, girls and other things, they gave it up, he said.
"I got back into model rocketing about six years ago," said McCoy, which is typical of many of these hobbyists, whose children became fascinated with the rocketry they used to do.
Mark E. McGraw, a Boeing electrical engineer, got caught up in rocketry again when his son Matthew, a junior at St. Louis University High School, went to a space camp at Huntsville, Ala., where he started building and flying model rockets.
"Irrational Exuberance"
Some rockets can be built for free from materials found around the house; others, some made from kits, can cost up to $8,000. Little Estes-brand rockets used by youngsters can cost as little as $3 to $5.
"Kits can go for less than $10 to tops of maybe $350," McGraw said. "But once you get into big rockets, you usually add electronics, special motor retainers, special chutes and chute protection devices, so you'll run the cost up to $600-plus."
For example, McGraw built a 6-inch-diameter Phoenix rocket, which he hasn't flown yet, that probably will cost him $1,230.
And then there are other constraints, such as finding an area large enough to handle the rockets. The Elsberry cornfield and farm, owned by Norman B. Champ Jr. of Ladue, a man the rocketeers greatly admire for his generosity, is located under a Lambert Field flight path.
Before any launch day gets underway, the rocketeers have to keep in contact with the FAA at Lambert, and everyone in the field is told to keep an eye out for aircraft on landing approach. Some rockets can achieve altitudes of more than 20,000 feet - about four miles up - although that wasn't a major concern on this day.
One of the hobbyists who builds impressive looking rockets that are not cheap is Doc Grant. He had the largest rocket that day: black, two stages and standing nearly 10 feet high. He calls it Irrational Exuberance and added this note to a sign posted near it: "Like Alan Greenspan and the stock market, it can be unpredictable."
Just about everyone had gathered to watch Irrational Exuberance take off. The first sound suggested something was seriously amiss. It made a loud pop, and the nozzle blew out.
It went up, but not very far, and crashed.
"When I heard that pop, I knew I was in trouble," Grant said. "I'll do an autopsy. It'll fly again."
To join the association, McGraw recommends going to the Web site at www.stlouisrocketry.org and download the membership application. Send it to president Bruce Weidner, or e-mail him at bweidner@slra.net.