When I was a kid, one of my science fair projects was rescuing endangered coast barrel cacti. We dug them up from a hill that was being quarried for gravel, and stored them temporarily in a warehouse. Fairly soon, they were transplanted by other people to suitable places.
As a sophomore in college, I was the chief engineer on this Human Powered Vehicle, which went over 45 miles per hour. Eddie, Carlos, and I built the bike, and a crew of about a dozen built the fairing. Dave, an Olympic Bicycling Medalist, pedaled it.
In college, I designed and drew all kinds of assemblies and sheet metal parts for Mobile Cam, a company which built trucks full of video gear TV stations sent to news scenes.
Also in college, I won a paper airplane contest. The idea was to land in a specific spot, but most people's airplanes floated around with the turbulent winds in front of the engineering building. I built mine like a lawn dart, so it was unaffected by winds. That's it standing up in the foreground.
After college, I designed and built some circuits that controlled Remotely Piloted Vehicles. The circuits controlled the wing surfaces to cause the wings to fold and unfold in flight.
Here I am in a fuel systems lab, testing parts early in my career.
A valve suffers a fatigue failure and sprays fuel.
I redesigned this sleeve valve for lower pressure droop, better manufactureability, and to simplify calibration and assembly into fuel controls.
This Combline Filter was typical of my projects at REMEC.
A complete iron bird mockup of the pneumatic system of a 757 and 767. We used the system to test various proposed solutions to pressure oscillations in the compressed air ducts.
Keith and I often travelled to Yuma, Arizona to conduct flight tests on the MD95 or Boeing 717.
In April of 2002, I was in Xi'an China for 3 weeks to flight test a gas turbine engine (APU) on an MA60 commuter turboprop aircraft.
One of the many Airborne Auxiliary Power Units I've worked on.
I developed Diagnostic Systems for C27J and C5M aircraft.