www.Hubair.aero - Corvin's Aviation Interests
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Around just about now ...
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... and a little while ago.
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strictly a personal website -
no commercial or professional interests or statements made or implied
no contractual statements made or implied
Robert and Helga sensed that I would be born with a longing to take to the skies. My mother was into fast things - a national and international Luge Champion. My father was a died-in-the-wool aviator. The love of freedom, speed and acceleration carried over to me. After building Airfix and R/C models I started flying gliders at seventeen. Moving from gliders to motor gliders and powered aircraft including the beloved J3 "Cub", I flew aerobatics and, eventually, a number of unique, high performance fireballs.
Photograph by Marc Ulm. Two of my favorite aircraft on which I learned to fly are caught at the same time on this fabulous shot. D-KOAP is the first entry in my log-book (with P.-W. Stahl as instructor, May 25. 1980, a 37 min. flight, including practice approaches on a nearby ploughed field); D-EHTU followed not long after.
Learning to fly ...
My very first flight instructor was Peter-Wilhelm Stahl, an ex-Staffelkapitän of 1./Kampfgeschwader 200, a secret operations unit, active in behind-the-lines operations in WWII. He had flown most of everything Germany built at that time, but the bulk of his hours were in the Ju88. After the war he built a new life, starting a local electrical company in the Chiemsee area. He joined the new Luftwaffe when Germany re-armed and retired as a Colonel in secret operations, as far as I remember. When I met him he was an instructor both at the German Alpine Flying School in Unterwössen, Bavaria, and at our club which was also stationed there. He was going on for 70. He wore white kid gloves when flying and never pushed a plane. Quite the achievement in a gliding environment. But fly he could. And teach, too. Sitting in the back seat of a tandem glider he would remove his joy stick from its mount and pass it over the student pilot's shoulder to prove that you were now flying the plane and he was just along for the ride, when he thought you were ready to go solo. Whatever I know about seat-of-the-pants flying, I learnt from him.
Unforgotten a telling anecdote from our flying days in the very early eighties. There had been a lot of goodnatured banter about Wilhelms age and whether or not a respectable gentleman like him should be flying at that progressed vintage. After bearing this reasonably calmly for a while he got up and asked someone to put a lead cushion in the first plane on the winch launch pad - he was of very slender build and needed ballast. He strapped into the plane, launched with the winch and quickly attained additional altitude at our local ridge. He then headed for the local elevator, a thermal that was there most of the time in this kind of weather. Suddenly the radio speaker on the launch hut crackled. Another pilot in the same thermal said: "I cannot believe this...!. The launch manager grabbed a pair of binoculars and started searching the thermal. The speaker crackled again. "He is passing me crackle, crackle... ". The guy with the binoculars sat down heavily and wordlessly passed the viewing tool around ... Wilhelm had out-thermalled the other guy ... inverted.
When my father's sponsorship of my flying adventure ran out, I was the club mechanic for the SF 28 motor-glider (pictured above) for many years. The club reduced the hourly rent on all aircraft for maintenance personnel - this was how I could afford to fly as a high-school and later university student in the first place. Many hours of tutoring and teaching the classical guitar were converted (at a reasonably bad ratio; one to eight?) into flight hours. The club itself was an army flying club that merged with a civillian, military-contractor (IABG) flying club (Fluggrp. HSBw, Neubiberg/IABG Flugsportgruppe). Its motor aircraft were stationed in Neubiberg, the last of many airfields very close to or actually inside the city of Munich, which have now all been abandoned and re-purposed.
Aviation Involvement - Projects
After my compulsory army tour I studied aerospace engineering at the Munich Technical University (TUM) because that is what I always wanted to do. Or so I thought. I quickly found out that I had more of an entrepreneurial bent than one for graph paper and calculators. Some time later I founded a business consultancy with friends from university. We specialized in turning around tech companies and since I was the guy with LowLead100 in my blood, I got to manage a number of fascinating aircraft manufacturers as Managing Director or CEO. So, I guess, many years of studying were not entirely wasted - and I got to do what I had always dreamed of as a young person: make beautiful aircraft, take part in their definition and design, test fly some of them ... but best of all, I met many fascinating individuals and charismatic, visionary and purposeful characters!
I know of no hum-drum people in aviation. If you fly, you seem to be driven by something that is larger than you. Driven by a longing to progress beyond yourself, to excel ... to be one with the skies, to test the limits ... what a great crowd!
Thank you - to all who have touched my life through our joint love of flying, aviating, being as birds. Let's make sure the gift of flight remains accessible for those who come after us!
I know of no hum-drum people in aviation. If you fly, you seem to be driven by something that is larger than you. Driven by a longing to progress beyond yourself, to excel ... to be one with the skies, to test the limits ... what a great crowd!
Thank you - to all who have touched my life through our joint love of flying, aviating, being as birds. Let's make sure the gift of flight remains accessible for those who come after us!
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ECONOFLUG TriLifter
A project I worked on as the COO of Econoflug AG was the TriLifter hybrid aircraft. This craft is a heavy lift vehicle that is able to operate without dedicated infrastructure. It combines three lift mechanisms, enabling vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) operations in and out of unprepared terrain. |
