Gerhard Waibel (designer)

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Gerhard Waibel (* 3. October 1938 in Frankfurt am Main ) is a German glider pilot and designer of gliders of the firm Schleicher Alexander GmbH & Co .

Thanks to his father Karl Waibel, who worked for the German Aviation Research Institute in Berlin and the United German Metalworks , Gerhard Waibel had points of contact with aviation from an early age. He was baptized by the father of the glider pilot Günther Groenhoff, who died in an accident in 1932 . The family had also known Wolf Hirth since the 1920s .

At the beginning of his flying career, he began building model aircraft and later joined Akaflieg Frankfurt in Egelsbach. After starting his studies at the Technical University of Darmstadt , he moved to Akaflieg there . During an internship in a steel mill in Sheffield, he began to develop the D-36 Circe together with Wolf Lemke in 1962 , which would prove to be groundbreaking for the design of plastic gliders. Waibel won the German Open Class Championships in Roth in 1964 with the prototype of the D-36 .

In November 1964, Waibel began working as a designer at Alexander Schleicher Segelflugzeugbau in Poppenhausen . His first design, the AS 12, was based on the D-36 and served as a prototype for the ASW 12 series model . The gliders he designed for Schleicher, up to the ASW 28 , which flew for the first time in May 2000, bear the type designation ASW.

He retired in August 2003 after 39 years of service. however, developed the high-performance glider Concordia with Dick Butler .

Awards

• 1993: OSTIV Prize for the introduction of safety cockpits in series aircraft construction.
• 2019: Otto Lilienthal Medal from the German Aerospace Society for his life's work

literature

• Peter F. Selinger: Rhön-Adler. 75 years of Alexander Schleicher glider construction , 2nd edition. Verlag RG Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2003, pp. 94-95.

Individual evidence

1. ^ German Aerospace Society (DGLR): Gerhard Waibel receives the Otto Lilienthal Medal of the DGLR. October 2, 2019, accessed January 27, 2020 .