Philipp has flown around 60 different types of aircraft, but it all started with flying gliders at the age of 14. This experience influenced him to pursue an apprenticeship in a glider repair shop where he worked for 5 years and became a mechanic and composite worker.
He was then called for civil service and for the next 15 months worked with severely handicapped people.
At the end of his civil service, Philipp was hired by Walter Extra, manufacturer of Extra aircraft, where he worked as a mechanic and for prototype work on the Extra 400 and Extra 200 prototypes. During this time, he got to know Haute Voltige champions, Klaus Schrodt and Peter Besenyei. Klaus, Peter and Walter Extra were Philipp’s main inspiration and starting his own business seemed the only way for him to ever be able to pay for an aerobatic aircraft.
After 2 years with Walter Extra, he started working for a Microlight Aircraft company. But after only a few weeks this led him to the idea of designing his own aircraft and trying to make his living from that. So, in late 1997 he became self employed and started “Impulse Aircraft”. Over the next 8 years, Philipp and his team built and sold 49 copies of the Impulse, including one version with a 475 hp Allison turbine engine. But it proved too difficult to compete economically with the labour force of the former Eastern block producers, and after 2 years of struggling for survival and desperately searching for an investor, he had to file for insolvency.
Luckily, just at the right time, he met Mr. Harro Moewes, who was willing to invest in the new project now called the “Xtreme 3000”. Now, Philipp is employed as a project engineer, test and display pilot in the newfound company XtremeAir GmbH. Philipp and a crew of 5 started to build the first aircraft at the end of December 2005. The first flight was 19 May 2006.
Philipp tells us that the Xtreme 3000 was designed by him over a period of 4 years with a strong influence from Klaus Schrodt and Ludwig Hofmann (member of the German National Aerobatics Team), who during that time, trained him on an Extra 300S, of which he is a part owner. In this aircraft, he few his first contest, the 2005 German National Aerobatic Championships coming out in 3rd place in the Advanced category. But he claims he only managed to start flying seriously due to the tremendous help from Ludwig and Klaus, without them he would still only dream!
Six weeks before the 2006 German National Championship, Philipp went through an intense training program and went on to win 1st place Classical and 2nd place Freestyle Aerobatics in the Unlimited Category, earning him the right to represent Germany at the 2007 World Aerobatic Championships.
Since then Philipp started trying all the known freestyle figures and required techniques for the Xtreme 3000 aircraft, which for various reasons is quite different from the Extra as the flying characteristics are more or less like a Sukhoi. He has been training and receiving input from many current and former Haute Voltige champions.
