Hi Tom,
This is kind of the big highlights version...
Started out in 1979 at the age of 19 in the USMC doing Deceptive Electronic Countermeasures including crypto to the board level, Comm Jammers, and early warning of attack systems that would deceive enemy weapons control radars, or deploy chaff or flares to fool heat seekers or radar guided missiles. My bird was the Grumman EA6B Prowler, VMAQ-2, 2nd MAW, and I got to work on mechanical, electrical, electronic and software components during that time and was fortunate enough to qualify for Advanced Miniature and Micro Miniature Component Repair training, which is a fancy name for advanced soldering to Mil Spec. It was a good time and I learned a lot.
When I got out of the Corp I went to work for a little company called TTC. We were at the right place, at the right time, with the right ideas and products, to be a big player in the global telecom and services business boom starting in the mid 80's. We developed a product line called a "T-Berd" (for T-Carrier Bit Error Rate Detector) and it was, and still is, a big hit in the industry. That was 35 years ago and the product lines and the solutions we provide to test and troubleshoot the global infrastructure communications fabric have been imitated by many others over the years and the competition is fierce now. But the T-Berd is a legend within every AT&T Verizon Comcast Orange BT Saudi Telecom TelMex... etc., not to mention every A-Z company like Avon Cosmetics to ZTE for instance. We test everything except Satellite uplink downlink stuff, and we even used to do that way back in the day (sat delay and echo simulators) but not anymore. The company name has evolved over the years through acquisitions, and we do a lot more now than just Telecomm. but if you had to say what we do in my side of the company it's "we help make your Internet, mobile and cable services work".
I am 57 now and have been semi retired for a few years, but I have been providing training on Cisco and Acano Telepresence systems to keep up with the latest in switch and router techniques like NFV and SDN for instance, and I have made a living all this time simply designing, installing, troubleshooting and/or training on one technology or another.
Over the years this has all allowed me to work with everything from RF amplifiers and radio wave propagation (like the Control link and vTX links in our quads need) to logic circuits and motor controls (like our FC/ESC/Motor combinations function), and the list goes on for a bit. In the long run I don't know much, but I know enough to figure most things out, and it has set me up well to be in this hobby.
I would do anything I can to help make you successful in the air, so If I can ever help you just let me know, but remember i'm pretty new to quads too so I still have a lot to learn about the nuances of all this. People like Virtue Violator, theGreenOrange, Jtrjr, and my buddy Wayno52 are great resources and helped me get started in record time when I first got started, and I'm sure they will chime in when they can, and keep me honest.
Best regards, and Cheers!
Randy
