I am one of those people who is driven to know how things work. I love airplanes and all types of sleek, powerful machines. I love beauty and art, and I hate ugliness, destruction and waste. I love clever design and puzzles of all descriptions. The information below may help to understand what that means, and why I am like this.
My dad was in Naval Aviation, and he loved airplanes. He had lots of 35mm slides that he took himself, and sometimes he would even develop the film himself. He would set up his slide projector or the Super-8 movie projector and make us a great slide show or some cool home movies on special occasions. He had lots of pictures of carrier aviation from the 50s, and I just drank it all in. Cool photos of the North American A-5 Vigilante, which he loaded bombs in, the Grumman F-6F Hellcat and F-8F Bearcat, the Vought F-4U Corsair, the Douglas AD-1 Skyraider, the F-9F Cougar (a really cool-looking jet fighter), He even had a picture of the F-101 Voodoo after a carrier landing. There were also various helicopters, etc. Rigging the barricade, launches & recoveries, and all the other exciting events that are part of daily life as a sailor in Naval Aviation. He would always take us to see local airshows, especially if the Blue Angels or the Thunderbirds were performing. I watched them perform amazing feats of airmanship in the F-4 Phantom II, and a little later, the A-4 Skyhawk. Wow! All of this made a huge impression on me, and I always loved airplanes and all sorts of machines, the more technical, and the more powerful, the better. Trains and cranes, rockets, motorcycles, dragsters and racing machines of all descriptions, land speed record vehicles all loomed larger than life in my young mind, and to this day, still excite powerful emotions in me, even as an adult.
Perhaps the biggest highlight of my young life was getting up with my dad and my little brother Dean at 3am one summer morning to head down to Titusville Beach to watch the Apollo 11 mission launch atop the mighty Saturn V rocket. Mere words cannot adequately describe the drama of that event, or the impact of this experience on me. We were nearly 3 miles away on the shore of the Intracoastal waterway, looking across the water to the Cape, and the rocket was visible, balanced by the red launch gantry structure. The actual launch pad itself was hidden by trees from our vantage point, but we could see almost the entire rocket. It seemed to be about the size of a well-used pencil held out at arms length, tiny, but white and gleaming in the early morning sun, trailing misty tendrils of Liquid Oxygen vapor escaping from the fuel tank vents. I was disappointed that it seemed to be so small, but later events were to prove that appearances can be deceiving. There were hundreds of people lined up all along the beach, and everybody had radios on, listening to the play by play, with Walter Cronkite and his compatriots soberly decribing all the unfolding events. Like a rock concert for science geeks and patriotic Americans. Everybody was excited, and we knew this was the big one. We were going to the Moon!!! As the Mission Control announcer began intoning the measured cadence of the final seconds of the launch countdown, everyone grew silent, and some counted along with the announcer. The tension in the air was electric, and when ignition happened at T minus 9 seconds, a cloud of white smoke burst from the trees below the base of the rocket, rapidly expanding outward. It was silent for a few brief seconds, as if everyone was holding their breath waiting for the release and liftoff. The rumbling, ripping roar of the loudest sound I have ever heard in my entire life burst over the crowd as the countdown reached zero and the rocket began moving upward. A different kind of silence fell, as the noise of the crowd cheering faded into inaudibility beneath this assault on the atmosphere. It was more than sound. It was a physical ripping and tearing so visceral that it was as if the very air itself couldn't withstand the titanic forces and velocities of the torrents of superheated flame roaring from the powerful Rocketdyne F-1 engines and I imagined I could feel vast boulders of air ripping apart in great chunks and rebounding, crashing and slamming back into one another under the pressure. There was very little smoke, just a graceful tail of pure flame, issuing forth with the blue-white intensity of a star, the lower tip churning and vibrating, trailing down below the tiny white launch vehicle. We could see everyone all up and down the beach waving their arms and jumping up and down, and their mouths were opening as if they were screaming, as my brother and I were also doing enthusiastically, but it was impossible for me to even discern if my own vocal cords were even working, as we were all enveloped in the massive rumbling, crackling torrent of sound from the little white pencil with the welding torch flame pushing it rapidly into the sky. Looking down at my legs and feet, I could see my clothes vibrating and pulsating, and I could feel the waves of sound crashing in on my chest. Small to the eye, true, but very impressive indeed. I will never forget the sights and sounds of that morning, and I will always be grateful to my dad for giving us the opportunity to witness such a literal earth-shaking event.
All of these things have led me into a career in aviation maintenance and engineering.
To read about my specific work-related accomplishments and get a better idea of who I am and what I can do, have a look at my resume, or review the information on my Linked-In page.
Little by Little - One Day at a Time