Dr. Günther Eichhorn Homepage on gei.aerobaticsweb.org and guenther-eichhorn.com Hobbies and Work

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Work

I am employed at Springer Science & Business Media, the largest publisher of scientific and technical books and the second largest publisher of scientific and technical journals, as Director for Abstracting and Indexing. See also my list of publications and my Curriculum Vitae.

Research

I have been out of research for many years now. I used to work on topics like:

• Interplanetary Dust Detectors (both ground based via Zodiacal Light and space based via impact detectors (HEOS and Helios) and scattered light (HOPE on the GIOTTO probe encountering P/Halley)).

• Age determinations of lunar samples with a laser probe. This was way back in the late 70's when lunar samples were still fairly new. With this method we could determine ages of single mineral grains in lunar breccias, moon rocks that are conglomerations of different older rocks, created during impacts of meteorites on the moon.

• Space based Gamma Ray Detectors (flew one from Antarctica on a stratospheric balloon in 1988 to observe Supernova SN1987A).

• Real-Time Data Acquisition Systems (eg. a high speed Speckle Camera at Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, and an automated telescope to observe P/Halley during the GIOTTO encounter from the ground, as well as various laboratory systems).

• Rocket experiment to observe the Zodiacal Light close to the Sun during a solar eclipse in 1992 from Mexico.

Hobbies

• Flying in aerobatics competitions. I own a Pitts Special S-2A , a two seat aerobatics biplane. I fly currently in the Advanced Category. In 1999 I flew in Unlimited and received the Unlimited Stars Achievement Award. I have all 10 Achievement Awards, all flown in the Pitts S-2A. I have won quite a few contests (Overall Arizona State Champion in 1991, New England Champion, Intermediate, in 1993, third place in the International Aerobatics Championships and Championships of the Americas in Fond du Lac, WI, 1998, an FAI sanctioned international contest, Northeast Aerobatic Champion in Unlimited for 1999). I practice as much as the weather allows, so on the weekends I usually can be found at the airport at Sterling, MA (3B3). I try to go to as many competitions as possible, but sometimes work interferes    

  Besides flying in competition myself, I also give aerobatics flight instruction in my plane. If you are interested in finding out what flying upside down feels like, drop me a note.

• Web site maintenance I maintain several web sites for different organizations. I am involved in the aviation website at Landings. I also maintain a soaring website and an aerobatics website. The Soaring Turnpoint website is also mirrored in New Zealand and South Carolina, USA Other sites that I maintain include our local IAC Chapter 35. My aviation website was the first aviation server to go on the WWW in 1994. I still have some soaring pictures and soaring contest results from these early years online.

• Scuba Diving: Unfortunately Massachusetts is not really the best part of the country to do that. I used to live in Florida which was much better suited for that kind of activity. That's where I learned to scuba dive. Since then I have experienced some spectacular dives in Florida, Hawaii and Australia.

• Music: Country and Western Music is my favorite music. We have a place near Boston called the Indian Ranch. They have live Country performers at outdoor concerts there during the summer. They usually have at least three or four very well known artists there every year. The Indian Ranch is located in Webster, MA on lake Chargoggagoggmanchaugagoggchaubunagungamaugg. This is really the Indian name of that lake.

  I also have come to like Irish music. One of my favorite bars, The Burren has live Irish session music on most days of the week.

• Traveling. In 1997 I started traveling to interesting destinations all over the world on a regular basis (at least once per year). I have put some of my pictures on-line for various countries. I almost invariably get asked which country I would like to visit again, and which country I liked best. The answer to the first question is none. There are so many countries that I haven't seen, that I don't have time to go back to any of them. I may visit some larger countries again to see parts that I haven't seen (India and Russia come to mind). The answer to the second question is that I can't answer that simply. Every country is different, has different things that are interesting. You can't compare seeing tigers in India with seeing Inca ruins in Perú, with seeing stone-age monuments in Ireland, with scuba diving in Australia on the Great Barrier Reef, with seeing a cheetah mother with four cubs eating a reed buck in Tanzania. Altogether I think I had the most comfortable feeling in Việt Nam. Certainly the food in Việt Nam was the best I had anywhere in the world. Already on the way from the airport to the hotel I felt that I liked that country. But then again .....

  Antarctica	Argentina	Australia	Brasil (Brazil) Rio de Janeiro	Burkina Faso
  Kâmpuchéa (Cambodia) Angkor Wat	Chile Santiago	中国 (China)	Česká Republika (Czech Republic)	Ecuador/Galápagos/Rainforest
  مصر (Egypt)	Greenland	Honduras	Magyarország (Hungary)	Lýðveldið Ísland (Iceland)
  Iguazu Falls Argentina/Brazil	भारत गणराज्य (India)	Éire (Ireland)	日本国 (Japan)	الأردنّ (Jordan)
  Kenya	Lietuvos (Lithuania) Vilnius	Madagascar	Mali	Mauritius
  Монгол улс (Mongolia)	عمان (Oman) Buraimi	Perú	Polska (Poland)	România
  Россия (Russia)	Rwanda	Senegal	Singapore	Slovensko (Slovakia)
  South Africa	Tanzania	བོད་ (Tibet)	Türkiye Cumhurieti (Turkey)	دولة الامارات العربية المتحدة (United Arab Emirates) Abu Dhabi/Al-Ain
  United Kingdom	Uruguay Colonia	Zimbabwe Victoria Falls	Việt Nam
  World War II reminders

• Here is a list of all countries in the world that I know of, with the spelling of the name of the country in the original script wherever I could find it.

• If you wonder what all those abbreviations and symbols mean in newsgroup and email messages, here is a List of smileys

• I have collected a list of the different Aircraft Engine designations. If you know of anything that is missing or incorrect, please let me know.

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