Flying in
aerobatics competitions: In 1988 I bought a Pitts Special S-2A
, a two seat aerobatics biplane. I started to fly in aerobatics competitions in 1989. 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). In 2018 I have stopped flying in competitions. Soon after that I put my plane up for sale. I sold it in 2021.
Web site maintenance: I maintain several web sites for different organizations. I was involved in the aviation website at Landings.com. I also host a soaring website. The Soaring Turnpoint website is also mirrored in Tucson, AZ, USA, and Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. Other sites that I host 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, aerobatics pictures and soaring contest results from these early years on-line.
Scuba Diving: Unfortunately Arizona 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, Mauritius, the Galápagos Islands, and Australia.
Hiking: I started hiking in the mountains around Phoenix in 2013. The scenery is fantastic, and the weather allows you to hike basically all year long. One of my most interesting hikes was a hike into the Grand Canyon all the way to the Colorado River (distance 26 km (16 miles), altitude difference 1,350 m (4,430 ft), total time 6 hours, track). In February 2015 I finally fulfilled a 40 year old dream and hiked to the top of Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa with the summit at 5,895 m (19,341 ft). It was a great experience.
Music: Country and Western Music is my favorite music. I also have come to like Irish music. One of my favorite bars, The Burren in Somerville, MA, has live Irish session music on several days of the week.
Lifestyle: I am a crossdresser, meaning I like to wear women's clothes. I don't try to look like a woman (I have a beard after all), I just like to wear skirts.
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 (Australia, 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, with seeing fantastic 1700 year old Roman floor mosaics in Sicily. Altogether I think I had the most comfortable feeling in Việt Nam. Already on the way from the airport to the hotel in Hà Nội I felt that I liked that country. But then again, everywhere are interesting things to see .....
Over the years I have visited a lot of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. These are arguably the most important sites in the world to visit. They include architectural, natural, and cultural sites. See the List of UNESCO World Heritage Sites that I have visited. I have seen many remnants of Ancient Civilizations in many parts of the world during my travels. In particular I saw many remnants of pre-Columbian civilizations in Central America and South America.
As far as food is concerned, up to my visit to Myanmar, I considered the food in Việt Nam as the best I had anywhere. The food in Myanmar was very much the same, with the addition of hot sauce being available in most places. In 2014 I visited Georgia. The food in Georgia is as good as or better than the one in Việt Nam and Myanmar. Especially the wine in Georgia is superb.
I try to identify animals and plants that I have pictures for. I have the list of all the species that I have identified. The list includes the binomial scientific names together with the English names, and, where known, the German and French names. The list contains links to the Encyclopedia of Life entry, the iNaturalist entry, the conservation status of each species, according to the IUCN Red List, and the Wikipedia entry for each species, as well as a link to my pictures of that species. I also have a built a graphical classification tree for all the species on my website. I have summarized the number of species per country that I have online. I have encountered quite a few species that are endemic to a country or a small area, they are listed in a list of endemics. I have also encountered quite a few species that are listed as "endangered" or critically endangered" in the IUCD Red List. They are listed in list of endangered species
Since I have especially many pictures of nature, birds, and other animals, I have listed them in separate bird pages, nature pages, a page with butterflies, a page with dragonflies/damselflies and a page where you can select the species type. There are some birds, flowers, dragonflies/damselflies and butterflies that I could not identify. Here are a list of unidentified birds, a list of unidentified flowers, a list of unidentified dragonflies/damselflies, and a list of unidentified butterflies. If you can identify any of these birds, flowers, or butterflies, I would appreciate it if you could put the name in the form and submit it.
Dr. Günther Eichhorn Travel Website
Soaring website