THUNDERBOLT AEROSYSTEMS - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• Chief Designer
• Member of the Thunderman Rocket Belt Team

Job Titles:

• Member of the Scientific Team

Job Titles:

• Director
• Member of the Scientific Team

Dr. Jeffrey Bottaro joined Thunderbolt Aerosystems as Director of Propulsion Chemistry in 2002, bringing to the company an illustrious background on chemical propulsion, especially in the areas of peroxide promoters and additives for extraordinary Specific Density and Specific Impulse formulations of monopropellants. Dr. Bottaro has had a lifelong fascination with the chemistry of nitrogen, which is a centerpiece of the phenomenology of both drugs and explosives, an experience which began in the early 1980s while working at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA. Then, the Office of Naval Research began a search for improved energetic materials for use as explosives and propellants with SRI and a program headed by Dr. Bottaro led to studies on the development of cubane-based explosives, fuels, and oxidizers. In 1989, while developing an improved route to dinitramines for application on cubanes, Dr. Jeffrey Bottaro conceived of and first synthesized the dinitramide molecule, the parent of ammonium dinitramide or ADN.

Job Titles:

• Member of the Thunderman Rocket Belt Team
• in 2002 As Manager

Eddie Andreini started flying in an L-2 Taylorcraft while still in high school at the age of 16. Today, he is a commercial instrument rated pilot and possesses an FAA aerobatic Ground-Level Waiver. Eddie has accumulated over 6000 hours flight time in a variety of diversified aircraft, including P-51's, Yak 55's, Pitts Specials and the Russian AN-2. His Super Stearman is a highly modified PR13D that started its life as a WWII primary trainer with a 225 hp Lycoming engine. Today it sports a modified 450 hp Pratt & Whitney with inverted fuel & oil systems. It has numerous modifications most of which are Eddie's originals. From the unique canopy, 4 ailerons with spades, speed fairings and a wing smoke system which will handle a variety of pyrotechnic devices. Eddie has mastered Stearman performances to perfection! He is one of only a handful of pilots capable of extracting such a remarkable performance from the Stearman. His show is an astonishing array of twisting and tumbling maneuvers at speeds from 0-200 mph. This fast paced. Roaring and colorful show is an exciting event that leaves audiences asking for more. Eddie joined Thunderbolt Aerosystems in 2002 as Manager of Air Shows, responsible for the coordination of venue acquisition, preparation and planning for the Thunderman flight show events and its proliferation throughout the aeronautical show circuit.

Job Titles:

• Member of the Scientific Team

Job Titles:

• Member of the Scientific Team

Job Titles:

• Member of the Thunderman Rocket Belt Team

Job Titles:

• Investor
• Member of the Thunderman Rocket Belt Team

Horace "Ori" Della Penna is Thunderbolt Aerosystems original "angel" investor whom provided the initial seed funding to allow the ThunderPack get off the ground. Mr. Della Penna and Mr. Amarena met each other in the early 1980s while sharing their mutual passion for motor racing and their personalities where honed by their early years of education while in their native Argentina. Mr. Della Penna not only had blind faith in Amarena's vision and technical prowess, but he quickly recognized the financial opportunity of the ThunderPack as well as its limitless potential for civilian service and personal entertainment market. Ori received his degree of Aircraft Mechanic at the Teterboro School of Aeronautics, Teterboro, NJ and like Amarena has been involved in motor racing both behind the wheel as well as on the board room, and along with brother John Della Penna have dealt with every aspect of motor sports around the world - including helping to develop the careers of many professional drivers.

Job Titles:

• Member of the Scientific Team
• Member of the Thunderman Rocket Belt Team

Job Titles:

• Member of the Scientific Team

Stanley Hiller, Jr., began his career as one of the world's three principal developers of vertical flight, while still a teenager. After leading a company that produced thousands of helicopters for military and commercial markets worldwide, Mr. Hiller began a remarkable second career, applying management techniques widely sought in the turnaround of troubled American companies. Hiller innovations in the technologyof vertical flight included the first helicopter flown in the western United States, the world's first successful co-axial helicopter, the famed Flying Platform, the one-man foldable "Rotorcycle," the unique "Hornet" helicopter powered by rotor-tip-mounted ramjet engines, and the first high-speed vertical take-off-and-landing tilt-wing troop transport. Stanley Hiller's company, Hiller Aircraft Corporation, started in 1949 as United Helicopters when he was 18 years old, and it was soon producing the first battlefield evacuation helicopters for the French Indochinese War and the Korean Conflict in the 1950s. Mr. Hiller became aware of Thunderbolt Aerosystems in early 2002 and lent a special ear to Mr. Amarena, whom as he noted in one of their many meetings, "Amarena reminded him of his early days of engineering", where by his single-handed entrepreneurship forged ahead with all his aviation dreams. Mr. Hiller's advise and scrutiny over the strategy of Thunderbolt Aerosystems' projects enlightens Nino Amarena and his team to always strive for quality, service and on-time/on-spec delivery of products. Stanley Hiller's contribution to Thunderbolt Aerosystems futuristic design for the ThunderJet and other jet-propelled project currently on the design board of the company has been invaluable, both from the technical standpoint and especially for the mentorship of someone who has been through the same paces, more than once.

Job Titles:

• Member of the Scientific Team

Job Titles:

• Member of the Scientific Team

William Colburn began his technical career compounding cermet materials for high temperature applications after a stint at the Air Force Monitoring Rocket Development in the former Union of Socialist Soviet Republic (Russia) were he spend three years monitoring the USSR's activities in the aerospace and missile fields, but not within the USSR.

Job Titles:

• Director of Training
• Member of the Scientific Team
• Member of the Thunderman Rocket Belt Team

Bill Suitor is Thunderbolt Aerosystems Director of Training bringing to the company an extensive and prolific portfolio of experience and empirical knowledge related to how to learn to fly a rocketbelt. Bill flew as an official member of the well-known Bell Aerosystems Rocketbelt Flying Team from 1964-69 and demonstrated it's unique flying characteristics in over 13 countries worldwide. He joined Bell Aerosystems as a rocketbelt test pilot in 1964 and has flown over 1200 flights without serious injury. Learning to fly a rocketbelt is no easy task. Suitor's most common explanation of what it feels to fly a rocketbelt returns the same reply: it's like standing on a beach ball on top of a pool of water. Hardly the kind of stuff any aircraft pilot has ever seen. But Bill's keen eye for the body positions of the pilot under training, coupled with his ability to venture diagnosys to flight attitude problems, have earned him the nickname of "mother goose", striving to make rocketmen of rocketboys. Suitor got his feet wet when he was hired by Bell Aerosystems to prove to the United States Army that an average, draft-age GI could fly a rocketbelt with little or no previous flight training. Bell Aerosystems was responding to a solicitation from the Army's Transportation Command in Fort Eustis, Virginia for a unique device known as the SRLD or Small Rocket Lift Device to be used by specialized troops. Having succeeded at his job at Bell with excellence and being the youngest of the five Bell Rocketeers, Suitor amassed a knowledge base unique to teaching how to fly kinesthetically a rocketbelt, drawing from his own novice days of testing. Suitor's distinctions also include working on the Apollo Lunar Program, testing different variations of the rocketbelt that were being considered for use by NASA's Apollo Astronauts. One of these devices known as the L.E.A.P. or Lunar Escape Astronaut Pogo was designed to provide lunar astronauts with a means of leaving the surface of the moon should the Bell designed rocket ascent engine were to fail on the Lunar Module. Following his career with Bell Aerosystems in 1969, Suitor joined the American Screen Actors Guild and began to fly the Tyler (based on Bell's rocketpack made by California inventor Nelson Tyler) rocketbelt for television and motion pictures. Some of his credits include: "Thunderball" the James Bond thriller starring Sean Connery, "Lost in Space", "Gilligan's Island", "The Fall Guy", "The Six Million Dollar Man", "The A-Team", "Newhart" and many other guest spots and commercials. His most spectacular flight was at the Los Angeles 1984 Olympic Games where Suitor demonstrated "flight without wings" in front of a worldwide audience of two billion people. Later in early 1995, Suitor flew the maiden only flight of a rocketbelt (designed from Bell Aerospace patents) manufactured by American Rocket Belt of Houston, TX. William P. Suitor joined Bell Aerosystems as a rocketbelt test pilot in 1964 and has flown over 1200 flights without serious injury. Suitor, was hired by Bell to prove to the United States Army that an average, draft-age GI could fly a rocketbelt with little or no previous flight training. Bell Aerosystems was responding to a solicitation from the Army's Transportation Command in Fort Eustis, Virginia for a unique device known as the SRLD or Small Rocket Lift Device to be used by specialized troops. The device was envisioned as a tactical/rescue vehicle with one main requirement, being ease of use and training. Wendell F. Moore, the lead engineer and the inventor of Bell Aerosystems' SRLD considered Suitor a perfect choice.