Photo from a point about halfway (age 43 or so) through my life (early to mid-1980s). Here I am (top row, right) in my role as chief engineer on a robotic air vehicle (we’d call it a drone today) program at a remote test site in the western U.S. We had shop mechanics, test group, engineering, transportation, and program management folks at the site. This was my first important job as chief engineer of a program. Prior to this I had been managing and coordinating company-funded engineering R&D for the technical staff (which included all the basic technologies for military aircraft of the era: aerodynamics, structures, propulsion, avionics, human factors, flight controls, software development, etc.). This program management job led me into executive management as Director of Technology a few years later, and thence on to a nice variety of military and commercial airplane executive management positions.
This program was the kind in which I could not tell Pat where I was going or what I was doing, so we weren’t real happy with the situation as it affected our life together. Things got easier once I moved up the chain of command; the hours and days got no shorter but at least we could talk about what I was working on.
phanaerozoic 