[Collins] Art Collins and Collins Radio

[Dr. Gerald N. Johnson]

Some of the field service engineers at Collins delighted at taking 
design engineers to the field to work on their designs and expected the 
designers to return home bloodied, burnt, or shocked.

I learned a lot about design for repair by fixing TV sets and radios for 
about 6 years before my BSEE.

Working for myself was often a lot more fun that having to work with 
management though a few consulting jobs were cut short by management in 
the companies that hired me for special projects. I didn't make as much 
money as I could have working full time for some company, but I didn't 
have to throttle any managers either.

In mm wave do you have an 1N53 or equivalent left over? I know a couple 
millimeter types looking for those and I'm trying to get signals and 
reception on 24, 47, and 78 GHz this summer. 24 I might make, the others 
are still rather wild dreams. I've been sutdying a book on diode 
multipliers from the late 90s. Spent some time in the library last week 
searching for more recent information but didn't find a whole lot. Came 
home with 190 MB of articles on weather radar and multipliers in my 
thumb drive. That will take a few weeks to absorb or find which ones are 
of no value.

After leaving Collins where I was a Jr engineer I've not had an official 
title unless Pvt, PFC, CPL, and Spec 4 count. Titles don't mean much in 
a one man company where I did the laundry, the floor cleaning, answered 
the phone, typed the reports, did the research and the field trips, did 
the testimony and the prototype assemblies, sometimes the limited 
production runs. I did hire help a couple times but I hadn't learned to 
delegate and my productivity fell because I was mother henning the help 
way too much.

On 7/6/2014 1:25 PM, Carl wrote:
> At one job I had a short title of Maintainability Engineer. This
> required me to interface between R&D and Field Service to be sure of
> meeting reliability standards, ease of repair/replacement, diagnostics,
> and field engineer training.
>
> That led to advancements to R&D, Management, and time to get a BSEE and
> MSEE as well as several advanced management and business courses at
> Harvard and MIT (-;
>
> OTOH retirement is more fun and I dont have to play office politics with
> prima donna engineers or cut throat upper management. I retired as a Sr
> Engineer in millimeter wave R&D at 62.

I still have one client but at 72, I've quit farming and my responses to 
the client are slow though I may spend another afternoon in the library 
on the weather radar question. The client is slow and stingy with checks 
too.
>
> Carl
> KM1H
>
>