Beautiful work Gabor, you have recalled the original. The airplane flown in "The Rocketeer" was my old friend the late Bill Turner's replica that he built in the late 70s ( saw it at its first public appearance at the Merced Calif. Antique Airplane Fly-In in 1979, the day before he crashed it at Half Moon Bay returning from the show, then had to rebuild it). The only person who ever flew it successfully was Steve Hinton, who flew it for the movie. He said it was just as nasty as every other Gee Bee, and flying they did for the movie was about two hours total that he called "hair raising". When I sat in it at the show, in the the tail down attitude you couldn't see anything inside an area you can describe if you extend you arms fully down to about level with your hips, then bring them up to meet above your head. Everything inside that is blocked off by that big honking engine out front. You couldn't have made me fly that thing for a high eight-figure sum in dollars!
Anyway, you have that thing looking beautiful! Bill Turner did several other full-scale flying replicas of 30s racers, including Roscoe Turner's Laird-Turner Special (another one you couldn't pay me enough to fly) and his last was the DeHavilland Comet replica. Bill was a legendary character out here in California "funny" aviation. Those guys back then had stainless steel cojones. Tony Levier's Firecracker, that he took second in the 1939 National Air Races, is out hanging from the ceiling in a hangar at Chino, and most people mistake it for a big R/C model.
