Rocket Belt Invention Sends Entertainment Booker’s Career Into Orbit : Flying Without Wings a Big Boost to His Business

The words of TV announcer Jim McKay still echo from the Olympics here two years ago:

“Well, there he is, Jetman, flying into the stadium, no wires, no tricks, just as you see it. . . . What a beginning!”

The man riding the rocket pack into the Coliseum a la Buck Rogers did indeed get the Opening Ceremony off to a memorable start. It was, by his own decision, his last trip via what is known as the rocket belt.

But the device itself, said to be the only operational one of its kind in the world, continues to be flown by a different pilot at special events. Considering the asking fee of $7,500 and up per appearance, and that the flight duration is a maximum of 21 seconds, this is as expensive as entertainment gets.

“In 1962, I was watching TV in my Woodland Hills home when my teen-age son, David, burst in with a magazine,” Clyde Baldschun recalled. “ ‘Dad,’ he said, ‘here’s a new gimmick for your fairs.’ ”

The elder Baldschun, a former saxophonist and bandleader, had gone into the business of booking entertainment for state and county fairs. Little did he know that the move he was about to make would involve him with events in just about every corner of the Earth.

The previous year, in Niagara Falls, N.Y., an assistant chief engineer with what now is Bell Aerospace Textron--Wendell F. Moore--had invented a rocket belt. It allowed the wearer to propel himself aloft and, using hand controls, to guide himself as long as the fuel lasted, 23 seconds maximum.

“It happened that in 1962, I was furnishing entertainment for the Calgary Stampede in Canada, and the theme that year was transportation, starting with the covered wagon,” Baldschun said. “I called the general manager of the stampede and told him I might be able to book a topper that would be unbelievable. His reply was: ‘Get it!’

$20,000 a Week

“The next morning I called the president of what was at that time Bell Aerosystems and explained that I could probably get $20,000 a week for appearances of his new rocket belt. The day after that, I was in New York and we were discussing it over lunch.

“They supplied one of their engineers as the pilot, and he appeared at the Calgary Stampede once a night for a week, for which the event paid $25,000.”

It was the start of a beneficial relationship for both the company and Baldschun: “I got a 20% commission. They supplied the pilots.”

The World’s Fair in New York, the Paris Air Show, the carnival in Rio, the Royal Easter Show in Sydney--promoters of events worldwide stood in line, figuratively, to see someone fly without wings.

Subsequently a more advanced jet belt was designed by Bell, and in 1970 that company granted a Michigan firm the rights to develop it, although a spokesperson for the latter said it hasn’t seen any public or commercial use. Inventor Moore had died. “The Bell president called and told me to cancel all engagements I had lined up for the rocket belt,” Baldschun remembered.

A second version of the one-man rocket propulsion systems had been built by Bell, and both were being retired. One went to the Smithsonian Institution, the other to a display at the Buffalo campus of the State University of New York.

At about the same time, Nelson Tyler of Van Nuys had developed a similar device.

Tyler is head of Tyler Camera Systems, known throughout the movie business for its camera stabilizing equipment for aerial photography.

“I had seen Bell’s, and as a hobby I decided to invent one of my own,” Tyler said.

Enter Baldschun again:

“A guy who was in the limousine-leasing business in New York called after getting my number from Bell and said he wanted to buy their rocket belt.

“I had heard of the one developed here, made a call to the Tyler company and was told that it was flyable, and had already appeared in TV commercials.”

Although the deal with the would-be buyer from New York fell through, Baldschun said, he arranged with Tyler to once again book the rocket belt. This time, however, he had to train and supply the pilots.

‘I’m Chicken’

Baldschun, now 65 and living in Sun Valley, said he has never himself strapped on the device and taken off: “I’m chicken.”

Others, however, were willing. One was a man from Youngstown, N.Y., who, while in the employ of Bell, had flown their devices during hundreds of the estimated 2,500 flights.

And now Bill Suitor would be doing hundreds more--his adventure with the Tyler model ending gloriously before more than 92,000 spectators packed into the Coliseum and a couple billion more watching television around the world.

“It lasted 17 seconds,” Suitor said by phone. He is a father of seven, now age 41, and works solely as a senior operator at the Niagara Power Project.

“I could have done a little more than 17 seconds, but all that Tommy Walker (the late special effects director of the Olympics Opening Ceremony) wanted was something to get everyone’s attention. It was to be the very first thing.”

The producer of the spectacular was impresario David L. Wolper. “There were two flights of the rocket belt for us,” Wolper said. “The other one was at our dress rehearsal.

“We paid between $7,500 and $10,000.”

Assuming the round figure of $10,000, that boils down to about $588 per second for a 17-second flight. Which means $35,294 per minute. Or $2,117,647 per hour.

Without question the highest-priced act in show biz.

But that wasn’t something that was going through Suitor’s mind. “Even though nobody had ever been seriously injured flying the rocket belt, my wife, Cheryl, felt it wasn’t worth the risk anymore. I told Nelson (Tyler) the Olympics would be my swan song.

“My pay for it was just in the hundreds, but it was such an honor. I said to myself: ‘Don’t go on your butt now, stupid!’

“You’d be surprised, but 17 seconds is a long time. I took off just under the torch at the peristyle end, and as I flew I could see the people with the balloons on the floor below me.

“I couldn’t dally, and I steered right for a landing on the running track. Cheryl was waiting there with a kiss.”

A perfect final trip for one of about 12 pilots, according to Suitor, who have learned to fly the device.

“In the earlier Bell model, there was a timer on the throttle, like an egg timer,” Suitor disclosed. “It was hooked to a buzzer in the helmet. From 0 to 10 seconds there was no sound, but beginning with with 11, there was a buzz every second. From 16 on, the buzz was continuous.

“That, however, eventually became unreliable, and the Tyler model had a color-coded stopwatch on the throttle. It was green for 10 seconds, then turned orange until 15 seconds, then went red.

“But since I had paced off the distance prior to the Olympics rehearsal, and then had used the watch to time myself during that flight, I had no need to refer to it during the real thing at the Opening Ceremony.”

Baldschun said that after that brief exposure of the device at the Coliseum, his phone rang constantly. “The calls came from Bangkok, Rome, Madrid, Japan, at least 800 of them.”

Eventually he got a call from Stockholm. The caller wanted to buy it.

Last year, Tyler said, he sold it to a group from Stockholm. But Baldschun is still in the picture, still booking the attraction, now with 29-year-old Hollywood stunt man Kinnie Gibson as the pilot.

While awaiting its next appearance, the rocket belt is kept in storage in Los Angeles. Since the Olympics, it has been seen during half time at the Super Bowl in Stanford Stadium, at the Hollywood Bowl kickoff of the California Lottery last year, and at the closing ceremony of Liberty Weekend in Giants Stadium in New Jersey.

Still ahead, according to Baldschun, are presentations at RFK Stadium during the half-time of a Washington Redskins game, an agricultural show in Auckland, New Zealand, and the carnival in Rio again (he was in Brazil a few days ago to finalize arrangements).

There have been hundreds of flights of the Tyler model, and everything still runs well, even though there is no in-flight movie.

The rocket belt runs on 90% pure hydrogen peroxide.

On the pilot’s back are two tanks--containing about 40 pounds of the peroxide. Between them is a third tank, this one containing nitrogen.

The nitrogen, Baldschun explained, pressures the hydrogen peroxide into a gas generator, where it contacts a silver catalyst bed and becomes steam. The steam emerges through two rocket nozzles, providing thrust.

The pilot, dressed in a fireproof suit, wears the device (85 pounds without the fuel) on a molded Fiberglas corset. His right hand is gripped around the throttle, his left around the yaw control.

“On a straight run, the pilot can go to 60 m.p.h.,” Baldschun said. “He usually ascends to about 60 feet. You don’t experiment with height, because you have to come down in a hurry.”

One of the many calls after the Olympics, he remembered, was from the owner of a castle in England, who felt an appearance of the rocket belt would be an ideal way to enliven the outdoor party he was giving.

For $10,000, plus expenses, Baldschun complied, and the guests got their surprise--all 21 seconds of it.