Kurt Schreckling (born 1939) is a German technician, who pioneered home-constructed

turbojet The turbojet is an airbreathing jet engine which is typically used in aircraft. It consists of a gas turbine with a propelling nozzle. The gas turbine has an air inlet which includes inlet guide vanes, a compressor, a combustion chamber, and ...

engines for model aircraft. He is also an amateur astronomer specialized in optical measurements. The asteroid 489603 Kurtschreckling was named in his honor.

Career

His design was constructed using hand tools, and has a wooden

compressor A compressor is a mechanical device that increases the pressure of a gas by reducing its volume. An air compressor is a specific type of gas compressor. Many compressors can be staged, that is, the gas is compressed several times in steps o ...

and a bent metal

gas turbine A gas turbine or gas turbine engine is a type of Internal combustion engine#Continuous combustion, continuous flow internal combustion engine. The main parts common to all gas turbine engines form the power-producing part (known as the gas gene ...

. It was fitted into a

radio-controlled aircraft A radio-controlled aircraft (often called RC aircraft or RC plane) is a small flying machine that is radio controlled by an operator on the ground using a hand-held radio transmitter. The transmitter continuously communicates with a receiver (rad ...

that flew successfully. He won various prizes and wrote books about this field of research. Jet engines following his design are designated with a K, and J for Jesus Artes (his co-developer), for example ''KJ66'' Years later and being retired he became an innovative well known developer for high end amateur astronomy components in the field of amateur telescope making (ATM). Having worked in his professional career as a physicist and measurement engineer in a German DAX-Company Kurt Schreckling introduced advanced opportunities and unorthodox ways to optimize and measure telescopes for ambitious amateurs on a high quality level regarding surface quality, light weight construction while permanently compensating different optical aberrations. His ideas for improving telescopes and their optical perfection have become legendary in the German-speaking countries in the amateur telescope maker scene. Kurt Schreckling is active in various amateur astronomer forums in the internet.

Awards and honors

Asteroid 489603 Kurtschreckling, discovered by Richard Gierlinger at the Gaisberg Observatory in 2007, was named after him. The official was published by the

Minor Planet Center The Minor Planet Center (MPC) is the official body for observing and reporting on minor planets under the auspices of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Founded in 1947, it operates at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Funct ...

on 11 July 2018 ().

Publications

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References

1939 births Living people German engineers {{Germany-engineer-stub