Central to the story in my book The Rocketbelt Caper is the amazing Rocketbelt 2000, or “Pretty Bird”. Here is some home video footage showing the RB-2000 being tested and flown.

For obvious safety reasons, the device was tested on a tether. The pilot in all of these videos is Bill Suitor, who flew the original Bell Rocketbelt in Thunderball. This is around 1994:

Now with the tethers removed, here’s a test flight from January 2005 1995. You can also see the protagonist of the book Brad Barker preparing the belt with Bill:

The Rocketbelt 2000 only made one brief public flight, at the Houston Ship Canal in June 1995, after which it disappeared:

Tomorrow I’ll post a video showing the history of the rocketbelt.

Paul Technology