Aerospace Engineering Co.
AIRPLANES OF THE AVIATOR
The Hughes H-1 Racer airplane was designed, built and flown by the Aero Telemetry engineering team for the Academy Award winning film, The Aviator.
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This beautiful airplane was built to simulate the World Speed Record attempt that Howard Hughes made in 1935 at Santa Ana, California.
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Constructed of wood and composite material, Joe Bok and his Aero Telemetry team designed their H-1 Racer around a powerful 360cc, twin-cylinder engine turning a 48 inch diameter, 3 blade variable pitch propeller.
Custom hydraulic retractable landing gear were designed and fabricated in-house. They had to tested and installed in less than 3 weeks.
Joe Bok and his Aero Telemetry team designed the world's largest flyable model of the Hughes XF-11 for the Academy Award winning film The Aviator.
It was first flown at Norton Air Force Base on November 21, 2003 and later at the Catalina Island Airport. The terrain at Catalina Island provided a historically accurate backdrop of the way Los Angeles looked from the air back in the 1940's.
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On February 29th, 2004, the Aero Telemetry XF-11 made 5 historic flights from the main runway at the Island and was filmed from both a helicopter camera platform and from the ground. Nearly as large as the helicopter that was flying next to it, the 25 ft airplane provided the cameras with what is arguably the most amazing aerial footage ever captured on film.
The Spruce Goose designed by Aero Telemetry for the Academy Award winning film, The Aviator, was the largest electric powered flyable scale model ever built.
Using 8 gear-reduced electric motors, the H4 Hercules or Spruce Goose, as it is more affectionately known, flew in the exact location as the original one did almost 57 years later in the Long Beach Harbor.
Reproducing the famous newsreel clip of the Spruce Goose flying past a cameraman was made possible by legendary Visual Effects Supervisor Rob Legato, who cleverly decided to setup his cameras on a moving boat and film using forced perspective.
The resulting shots were so convincing they were used as clips to introduce The Aviator film during the live television broadcast of the 77th Academy Awards.
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The Aero Telemetry design team also provided 7 other airplanes used as motion control models for "green screen" computer graphics and visual effects for the Academy Award winning film, The Aviator.
The airplane models included a 14 ft Gotha Bomber used as the Howard Hughes Hell's Angels Camera Plane, a Sikorsky S-38 flying boat, 2 Fokker D.VII's, 2 RAF SE-5A's and a DeHavilland DH-4.
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1 of the Fokker's and 1 of the RAF SE-5A's were converted to flyable R/C models that were flown in the background shots of the Hell's Angels set sequences for the movie
