About Me

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As a child I was fascinated with radio/tv communications and like many others wondered how such things worked. We lived near a small library in the Columbia City portion of Seattle and I quickly went through their collection of books pertaining to radio and TV. And to the dismay of my parents who were more tolerant than I as a parent, I was also the child who disassembled things to see their inner workings, hence there was a period of time when we didn't have any working doorknobs or clocks in our house. The last bit is an exaggeration but it is true that I took them apart.  

As with most people I knew, I started working part-time jobs from the 9th grade and continued through college where I majored in electrical engineering at U of W. My first engineering job was at Boeing Aerospace in Kent Space Center.  I had no idea what I was getting into and was assigned, for what seemed at the time, the daunting task of designing an RF circuit board to down-convert and digitize a radio signal from a Navy JTIDS terminal. It was also my first exposure to surface mount components and microstrip/stripline designs but fortunately I had a good mentor (GWF). The engineering process of going from paper design to circuit boards, chassis and racks, then delivering and integrating at a Naval facility in San Diego was intense and at the same time appealing to me. Like putting together a giant jigsaw puzzle with pieces that you are inventing along the way.  

After 4 years at Boeing I moved to Los Angeles to work for NEC doing cell site maintenance and upgrades. And shortly afterwards I ended up at TRW in Redondo Beach, California, courtesy of someone I used to work with at Baskin Robbins on MLK Jr Way South (still there!) while in high school. It's strange how something seemingly innocuous like scooping ice cream can change one's future. TRW was a great place to work and I also found Los Angeles to be a fun place to live while in my 20s and 30s. I worked with a group of modem engineers and we specialized in the development of high data rate satellite ground station receivers. These experiences at Boeing and TRW (now Northrop Grumman) were my formative years as an engineer and played an important part of who I am today.