Flying has been always one of my dreams. My aviation career initially started as a small kid when my parents registered me on a holiday-course to build a small model glider (Graupner RC UHU). After roughly one week of crafting, the small model airplane was ready and successfully had its maiden flight on a hill near the village I lived. A few months later, I upgraded it with a kit providing an electric motor and a bigger battery so it could stay in the air even during bad wind conditions. After a few flights even through stronger winds, I accidentally smashed it into the ground and fully destroyed it.
As time passed on, I walked through the city with my parents while meeting one of the employees flying a small model helicopter through the alley in front of a toy store. He flew up and down the road, did short races with other children and controlled it through the air like a professional showing the capabilities of the small helicopter. I convinced my parents to checkout the store and bought the exact same helicopter, a few weeks later. During the next years I built and flew more complex helicopters with more control-axis, bigger ones like the Align T-Rex 500 and a small Blade MCPX which was capable of doing aerobatics.
Whilst the time passed on, I always wanted to build a multi-copter and as filming was another hobby of mine, I’ve flew first a Blade 350 QX together with my father and later built a hexacoper which could carry one six-pack of water. I extended it with a gimbal to hold one of my DSLR cameras and I used it in quite a few video-projects. As having one copter is not enough, I built a small racing quadrocopter with a FPV camera-system. I enjoyed flying races through the trees while fighting the better lap times of my friends.
In 2019, I walked through the airport of Mainz-Finthen during their open day. I talked to multiple private pilots and finally decided to take the step and do my private pilot rating. At first I decided to start with the European certificate called the LAPL-A. Due to the Corona pandemic, I was forced to take two breaks during my pilot training for multiple months each time. After roughly 1.5 years, I finally did my check-ride in May 2021 and passed it. Therefore, I can now call me officially a private-pilot. As holding one license is not enough, I decided to do the upgrade to the international PPL-A afterwards and did a second check-ride in December 2021.
During the year 2022, I decided to do one more license and started my theory training for the Basic Instrument Rating (BIR). As time passed one, I decided to not only do the BIR but switch over to the Competency-Based Instrument Rating (CB-IR) due to a similar amount of training needed and the option to use it internationally. Let’s see how long it will take until I can finish my IR-training.