Eric Falkner c. 1982
Eric Falkner (September 16th, 1924 - April 27th, 2021) was a businessman, designer, and engineer. His company Radio Control Specialists Ltd (commonly known as RCS Ltd) developed and supplied radio control equipment for military and modelling requirements throughout the world.
He flew the Thunderbird 6 Tiger Moth bi-plane on the 1968 feature film Thunderbird 6 for sequences where a series of radio-controlled models of the aircraft were used. Unlike the vast majority of the crew (who were employed by AP Films), Falkner was an external contractor who was brought in to help.
During the making of Thunderbird 6, Falkner put the Tiger Moth models into dives and waited for visual effects director Derek Meddings to call "cut" (in other words, "stop filming"). Sometimes Falkner waited too long for Meddings and the models were not brought out of their dives. Consequently, the models were damaged and had to be rebuilt.
Outside of Thunderbird 6, Falkner worked on the 1967 film Billion Dollar Brain.
In the 1990s and 2000s, he owned Brentford Radio Control Centre, a model shop in West London. By April 2014, the shop had a new owner.
Falkner died on 27 April 2021, aged 96.
Trivia[]
- Numerous sources (including the Thunderbird 6 credits and IMDb) erroneously give his surname as Faulkner. For the record, his legal surname was Falkner.