Junkyard warriors

Mike Sciacca

Ron Milligan flies planes for a living, both commercial and military.

Now -- and this would be any young kid’s fantasy -- he’s got to

scrounge around in a makeshift junkyard, looking to create the biggest,

fastest or strongest contraption with any parts he can find.

You might say he’s the proverbial kid in a candy store -- at age 38.

“Yeah, it will be a lot of fun,” Milligan said of the scavenger hunt.

“It’s definitely a game for the grown up kid in all of us”

Last week Milligan filmed an episode of The Learning Channel’s

“Junkyard Wars,” which tentatively is scheduled to air in January. The

1981 Edison High graduate, a T-29 pilot in the Air Force Reserve at

Edwards Air Force Base, is part of the “Jet Jocks” team whose other two

members include fellow pilots Dave Fedors of Palmdale and Giff Stein of

Phoenix.

All three were roommates at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs

and also at the U.S. Air Force Pilot Training Center.

Commercially, Milligan is a pilot with Delta Air Lines and Fedors and

Stein fly with American Air Lines.

All three were beginning their first day of filming Junkyard Wars

locally when terrorist attacks hit the East Coast last Tuesday. Taping

continued throughout the week, and all three were safe on the ground.

Junkyard Wars gives two teams 10 hours to see which team can create

the biggest, baddest, most thorough “whatever,” Milligan said, with parts

they can find in a junkyard.

At dawn, contestants are informed of their mission and also are

assigned an expert in the field of that day’s challenge. The clock starts

ticking and the teams race to design and build a working machine with the

parts they find.

People from different walks of life -- engineers, machinists,

soldiers, appliance repairmen, psychologists and, now, pilots have

competed.

In its first season last year, the series received an Emmy nomination.

“I saw my first episode of the show last January,” Milligan said

before he took part in the filming. “I then fired off an e-mail to both

Dave and Giff asking if they’d be interested. Both said they were up for

it. The tough part was getting an application ready and coordinating our

schedules. Once we did, we were ready to go.”

Fedors, Milligan said, found an aviation junkyard in Rosamond and

filmed their application video, which featured a one-minute introduction

of each team member. They had five minutes or less to describe how

something might work, and Fedors came up with the idea of a rap song on

how an engine is built. Milligan and Stein refined the tune a bit, and

the rappers were a hit with the folks at TLC, who then asked the Jet

Jocks to be on the show.

Out of hundreds of applicants, The Learning Channel said, eight teams

of three people from the U.S. and Canada were selected for their

mechanical skill, creativity and “crazed lust for horsepower.” Teams will

be paired off against one another to compete in a single elimination

tournament. The winners of each competition advance to the next round.

While the contestants take this competition seriously, they have a

good time in creating their final design.

“Usually, the program entails a lot of problem solving and one skill

we do need to have is welding,” said Milligan, who, in his youth,

delivered the Independent as a paperboy. “All three of us have welded in

the past and we currently are brushing up on our skills. We’re going

there to have a good time but, we want to win.”

Milligan’s game plan for the competition was simple: “Don’t reinvent

the wheel,” he said. “But Dave’s theory is to build the biggest engine

and have an automatic transmission. We have a good team bond, so I know

we’ll come up with a game plan that we all can agree on.”

The resources they have to choose from are scrap parts, from corroded

steel to rusted aluminum.