Ageless hobbying

Walter Hansen repairs a model ship that has been through radio-controlled combat contests in which ships shoot ball bearings. (photo by Jeff Kan Lee)

Capt. Walter Hansen has survived countless naval battles and multiple maritime disasters. A few of his battleships have sunk like The Bismarck, only to be resurrected and patched up for yet another fight.

It’s all part of the game, however. For guys like Hansen – and increasingly more women, too — hobbying taps into the kid within, who loved playing with small cars, airplanes, robots, trains and monsters.

The Santa Rosa hobbyist, who at 42 is living a little boy’s dream playing with man-sized toys, is a member of the Western Warship Combat Club, a 40-man armada with members throughout the Bay Area that get together to fight on inland seas — think small ponds and reservoirs — using sophisticated, radio-controlled, scale-model warships.

The ships, weighing 30 to 40 pounds, are equipped with pneumatic cannons that fire small BBs or pellets capable of boring through the soft, balsa-wood hulls.

“It’s a kid’s dream. Kids have been building models and blowing them up for ages and ages,” said Hansen, who in his other life is an IT systems administration for a Santa Rosa marketing company. “The idea that we can actually build these ships is really nice. But then it seems a little pointless to go out and run them around just to have them look nice. A natural extension was to figure out a way for them to actually do battle.”

For many of the members it’s not just the fun of playing but the pleasure of tinkering with their big toy boats that draws them to the hobby.

“People just have a desire to express some creativity, whether it is building a model railroad or assembling a plastic model or playing a strategy game,” said Steve Elliott, co-owner with his wife Jean, of HobbyTown USA, in Petaluma, where tinkerers of all stripes gather to connect and stock up on supplies.

HobbyTown is sponsoring the annual Hobby Expo 2012 on Feb. 11 at the Petaluma Community Center. Hosted by the Santa Rosa chapter of the International Plastic Modeler’s Society, it’s a chance for enthusiasts of a wide range of hobbies — from model wooden ship builders to Star Wars and World War II re-enactors — to gather with like-minded souls for competitions, contests, demonstrations, displays and other activities.

The public is also invited to come by and learn more about a range of hobbies, most focused around models, many radio-controlled.

The word “hobby” can evoke a limitless range of pastimes, from collecting to scrapbooking, sewing to arts and crafts, tinkering with model cars to building robots.

“It’s less expensive than having a full-size counterpart,” said Jake Rosen, owner of Jake’s Performance Hobbies in Rohnert Park. “You get to be a gearhead and enjoy what that brings to you — the advantage of working on it and tinkering without the super high costs of a full-sized car.”

In a world where geeks rule, channeling their passion for technology into a global “Maker” movement by turning spare parts into awesome gadgets, guys like Dan Chatterton are in their element.

The 25-year-old Petaluman builds radio-controlled fighting robots. A member of a small group called North Bay Bot Builders, Chatterton has his dream day job working in a machine shop, which allows him to come in during his off hours to use the equipment to build his “bots.” He can use anything from metals and steel to aluminum, titanium, carbon fiber and high performance plastic.

He was turned on to the excitement of hand-built machines doing battle in the ring through the TV show “BattleBots” when he was a young teen.

“That was ten years ago. I always thought it was great and that I would love to build one of those,” he said. “But I didn’t know of any groups locally that were doing it and didn’t know who to ask. Then I stumbled across this club at Santa Rosa Junior College and saw their fighting robot and I thought, ‘This is it.’”

The group has morphed into the North Bay Bot Builders, who enter their radio-controlled fighting machines into competitions akin to boxing matches.

“Some people do things at home with a hand drill and screwdriver and tape and glue and there are people who pay $100 or $150 an hour to rent a machine shop,” he said.

“All of us builders would agree, half of winning is building a durable robot,” he added. That means making a bot that will, like a good prizefighter, remain standing in the ring even after getting wonked during combat.

Jon Stychno, a 32-year-old insurance broker from Santa Rosa, gets to indulge his love of flying by piloting model airplanes, a passion stirred growing up with a father who was a professional pilot. He is a member of the Wine Country Flyers, who have their own tarmac in Geyserville, where they safely fly palm-size planes or aircraft with 12-foot wingspans.

He said the 100-member club has a lot of fathers and sons who get out and fly together.

“It’s a great way for a kid to get out of the house and have that video game experience but in a real-world application,” he said. “And you can learn about all types of things, whether it’s engineering, aeronautics or physics.”

You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com or 521-5204.