WOODSTOCK, Illinois USA — When Alexis Henry saw people launching rockets in the park behind her house in Woodstock, she walked over to check it out.

The 7-year-old was fascinated with the rockets and was invited to launch one herself — a Sputnik replica made of a pink Styrofoam ball with four thin wooden legs.

Tammy Kise, of Woodstock, (seated on truck bed) and her two children, Jonathan Kise, 6, and Julia Kise, 8, watch as their father, John Kise Jr., launches a rocket into the air, with their maternal grandmother, Dona Townsend, of Langley, Oklahoma.

“That was awesome!” Henry said as the rocket blasted off the launch stand about 20 feet in front of her, going several hundred feet straight up.

Behind her, Bob Kaplow, 53, who had built the Sputnik replica, clearly was happy to have introduced another youngster to the hobby.

Kaplow, who lives in Dundee, is a member of the Fox Valley Rocketeers, a group of 25 area residents — mostly men — who meet on the second Sunday of the month at Raintree Park in Woodstock to launch rockets that they have built.

The group also meets monthly to talk about rocket-building or hear from speakers.

The group’s president, Mark Bundick of Woodstock, is president of the National Association of Rocketry. Bundick, who works in the financial industry, said his interest in rockets came from being a child of the moon-race era and the son of a NASA employee.

He encourages others to take up the hobby.

“For young people, these are models that are relatively easy to build, and almost all of them work the first time,” he said.

“There’s something magical about it for the kid who has built his own rocket and seen it pop up into the air,” he said.

For the more experienced adults, the challenge is creating something unique, Bundick said.

Kaplow is one Rocketeer who likes to “take weird things and make them fly,” he said.

At this month’s launch, Kaplow flew a rocket made of four America Online CDs and a paper tube. He has other rockets made of bottles of bath soap and a blue plastic flying saucer from a McDonald’s Happy Meal.

Kaplow has been a rocket aficionado since he was 10 years old. Others in the group, like chemist Ed Chess of McHenry, rediscovered the rockets of their youth when their own children became interested in them.

Port-a-potty’s first launch

Diane Dorn of Ringwood saw a rocket kit in a hobby shop six or seven years ago and decided to buy it.

The Marian Central High School science teacher since has added rocket-launching to her curriculum.

“One year, we did some math to see how high they flew and what was their acceleration,” she said.

This year, several of her students are in rocket-launching competitions.

Dorn, who is not a member of the Rocketeers, brought a new rocket in the shape of a miniature port-a-potty to a recent launch. She stuffed the inside of the 8-inch blue rocket with a parachute and fireproof wadding, added a cardboard cylinder containing black powder, and set it up on a tripod-like launch pad. At the push of a button and with a loud whoosh, the portable toilet shot into the air.

The top burst off, the parachute deployed, and it fell safely back to earth.

A bad day

“Uh oh. There it is. Right there.”

“It’s going to hit the plane.”

“Still falling. Still falling. It’s going to be in the trees ... I lost it now.”

“That’s going to probably end up on highway 47.”

That was the commentary during one of James Kalemis’ launches  June 10, when his rocket landed way outside of Raintree Park. The Motorola engineer from Streamwood had a rough day – his next rocket got caught on top of one of the only trees in the park, and a third rocket malfunctioned on launch, sending it spinning around the spectator area where it nearly hit the range safety officer.

In spite of the incident, Judy Kaplow said she felt very safe watching her husband, Bob, and 13-year-old daughter, Rachel, launch rockets.

“There is no way on earth I could be happier with my daughter involved,” she said. “It’s a great introduction to math, science, engineering. It’s a great hobby.”

“I would rather have my daughter on a rocket field than ... on a model airplane field, or playing soccer or football,” she said.

Bundick said since the hobby began in the 1950s, he was aware of only one serious injury that resulted from hobby rocket-launching. 

Kalemis laughed off Sunday’s mishaps and the fact that he lost two of his rockets.

“That's part of the hobby,” he said. “Now you get to build another one, and make it better.”

Copyright © 2007, Northwest Herald.