Type Privately held company Headquarters Putzbrunn, Germany Website www.eel.de | Industry Aerospace Products Gliders Founded 1976 | |
Founder Heiner Neumann and Dieter Reich | ||
Entwicklung und Erprobung von Leichtflugzeugen (English: Development and Testing of Light Aircraft), usually just EEL, is a German aircraft design firm based in Putzbrunn. The company was founded in 1976 by Heiner Neumann and Dieter Reich. It specializes in the design of gliders and motor gliders, provided in the form of plans for amateur construction.
Both Neumann and Reich studied aeronautics in the early 1960s while at the Technical University of Berlin. Reich designed the two aircraft marketed by EEL.
The EEL ULF 1, a foot-launched microlift glider that weighs 55 kg (121 lb) empty, first flew in November 1977. The EEL ULF 2 is a single-seat motorglider that first flew in October 1993. As a result of his design work on the ULF 2 Reich received the Oskar Ursinus Vereinigung (OUV) Hans-Becker-Prize in June 1997.