Ten years I worked in the cinema as a decorator. We had to do a lot of interesting things (I mean in historical movies). Ordinary modern melodramas are the ones that are most in demand, from the point of view of the decorator, films are not interesting. Another thing is the historical films about the war well or fantasy in which, unfortunately, I never had the chance to work. Why am I saying all this? Once I worked on the historical film The Defenders of Riga. A film about the events unfolding in Latvia after the end of the first world war. The Russian prince Bermond Avalov, in alliance with some surviving German divisions, decided to take Riga as a result of which the local population rose up against the interventionists, was able to reorganize and form a competitive resistance. That’s about that long war and filmed that movie and there was an episode in which German planes fly to bomb Riga. Well, not only were there more scenes at the airfield, etc. In general, the budget for the movie was quite decent and specifically for the filming was built a whole movie town, streets, houses and a church. Also five cars of that era and there were talks that it would be necessary to build a Focker D-7 aircraft if I’m not mistaken. We wanted to make a replica that could ride on its own on the field well, and episodes in the sky would be finished by the craftsmen on the computer. I really, really expected this. I wanted to participate in the construction of the aircraft but director decided to cut some scenes from the airfield and episodes of bombing were made digitally. Money was not enough and it was easier. Of course, I could not influence their decision because he was just one of the employees of the art department and regretted to do his job. However, a little later when I turned my gaze on the paraglider and realized the opportunity to rise to the sky myself, I came up with the idea of how to solve the problem of a small budget in a movie about old aircraft.

The idea is very simple, We build from aluminum and fabric, a replica of the aircraft, perhaps a little smaller scale but so that it was not very obvious. We install the motor in the front, whichever rotax 447 we carefully mask under the original details of the engine of the aircraft. We connect all this apparatus to a tandem paraglider and launch into the sky. I think that with a little skill, such a device will be able to fly quite well. I’m not saying that you have to decide things like lifting the wing with the long tail of the aircraft and the stability of the chassis and control, etc. But in the end we get an inexpensive aircraft that can cheerfully run around the green and if you need to fly. Shooting from inside the cabin is almost without problems, shooting the aircraft and its spans are removed as usual and then the video is processed and the paraglider is erased from the frame and there is a bookcase flying over the field. It is possible to lift anything into the sky, for example, in Disneyland, thus a fire-breathing dragon flies with a large wingspan and tail, which proves the vitality of my idea.

Honestly, I think if you make a paratrike, even if in a classic scheme with a motor behind it, but make it an excellent cabin like a World War I aircraft, so that when you fly it feels like you’re flying an old plane, that feeling of flight on such an apparatus would be more saturated than then you experience flying on a stool which forms are not graceful.