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Seven years for the dream of a lifetime: pilot builds his own airplane
Marianne Natalis
Rainer Stark in his RV-7RS: You can recognize a professional pilot by the way the instruments are placed in the airplane. © Marianne Natalis
GUNZENHAUSEN – Professional pilot Rainer Stark from Gunzenhausen has built himself an airplane. How do you come up with such an unusual idea? And how many hours he screwed on the RV-7A? We visited him at the airfield where his machine is located.
"Üabove the clouds" sings Reinhard Mey, and professional pilot Rainer Stark certainly knows both the song and the feeling. But recently, his limitless freedom begins on the ground, when he opens the big gate of the rear hangar up at the airfield. There his eyes immediately fall on the brand new RV-7A. It is by no means just any airplane, but a very special gem. The 56-year-old Gunzenhauser built it himself, rivet by rivet, screw by screw.
Yesterday, he tells on this golden October day with a matching bright smile, he flew to Coburg. While there, he checked out the town – very nice, in his opinion – and brought back a local specialty, which he now serves to our conversation: Coburg cookies. He doesn’t have to save them for special occasions, he can always get new ones. Just like he can now quickly fly over the weekend to the North Sea or go on vacation to Elba. His metallic red and white aircraft has a range of around 1300 kilometers, fulfilling a lifelong dream.
He got his love for building airplanes from his father, who, however, still limited himself to model airplanes. Rainer Stark learned that it can also be bigger in the kitchen of Hermann Witzleben. The first chairman of the then still young air sports association "Gelbe Burg" built gliders there for the club.
In the early 1990s Rainer Stark "all the brochures", there was to build single-engine airplanes, send and studied it enthusiastically. But then life with its ups and downs took its toll, the dream was more and more forgotten.
Stark family supports aircraft dreams
But never quite. About eight years ago, the plans took shape again and the professional pilot initiated his wife Heike into the idea at a Sunday breakfast. Because the family knows that Strong, must stand behind such a project, otherwise it does not work. And then he set to work.
Now you don’t have to believe that you can just order a kit and get started. Building an airplane is a "killing effort", says Stark, and as he tells us, it soon becomes clear that this is an understatement.