A Few Projects from My Past
It is important to know some concrete history of each individual that seeks public office. I have spent my life successfully solving problems and learning the causes so that problems could be avoided. All too often in the legislative field success is defined as getting a law, any law passed. It is not unusual that a particular law does not do what is promised and usually has unexpected negative impact on the United States and its citizens. Our congress has a history of deficient performance. The recession and all its associated parts are a direct result of bad Congressional legislation and not from uncontrollable external sources.
The following pictures and descriptions are a few of the projects I have had the pleasure of working on. The following selection of projects is related to the availability of pictures to document efforts. I am missing many fun and complex projects from the list, many of which have been done in confidence.
Note: any time my company is referenced; the company is SPW Engineering Group, Inc. which I closed down at the end of last year so I could run for the United States Senate.
ARCTIC PIPELINE I flew to northern Greenland, 750 miles north of the Arctic Circle and investigate a leaky oil old pipeline to determine the causes, create a plan to repair, estimate the cost, and determine the environmental concerns. The pipeline was eventually shutdown. This effort was for my company.
RADAR & AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL SYSTEM UPGRADE
My company upgraded an Air Traffic and Radar control system along the Texas Mexican Border. The upgrade was to improve Safety, Lighting Protection and Technical Grounding. Unlike the -30F temperatures in the Arctic, the standard daily project temperature was from 105F to 107 F.
JET ENGINE TEST FACILITY
My company designed, built and added performance upgrades to three jet engine test facilities. Two of these facilities were originally captured from the Nazi’s at Peenemunde, then transferred to the United States at the end of World War II.
REPAIR of the HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE
COSTAR Corrective Optics Prototype Design, Fabrication and Test
I led a team of young engineers to design the prototype hardware which was used to define the ability NASA to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. Our success motivated NASA mount a repair mission to fix the Hubble. The requirements of a complex jitter test were met when the maximum motion in any single axis was measured to be less than one half micron. The device shown below was designed by me on 8 ½ by 11 quadrille pad and pencil. Randle Frey designed the optical bench, while John Fasick supplied analytical support.
COSTAR was not a science instrument; it was a corrective optics package that displaced the High Speed Photometer during the first servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. COSTAR was designed to optically correct the effects of the primary mirror's aberration for the Faint Object Camera (FOC), the High Resolution Spectrograph (HRS), and the Faint Object Spectrograph (FOS). All the other instruments that have been installed since HST's initial deployment have been designed with their own corrective optics. When all of the first-generation instruments were replaced by other instruments, COSTAR was no longer needed and was removed from Hubble during the 2009 servicing mission.(This paragraph and picture borrowed from NASA)
I also contributed in other ways to the Hubble Repair mission by designing the so called Cosmic Latch (located beneath the astronauts head) for the Radial SIPE. This device has flown on many trips into space and last went up in 2009. I designed the latch using an 8 ½ by 11 quadrille pad. (NASA PHOTO)
MODIFICATION to the BAC1-11/BIB ORS TESTBED
I redesigned the aircraft pressurization system to support the thermal loads from the B1B Offensive Radar System and flight test equipment. I was required to fly my design as a flight test engineer on all the experimental test flights. I was also involved in engineering various parts of the radar system.
BATSAT Analytical Payload for Pegasus Missile
I Led a team of engineers who designed, built and successfully tested the BATSAT analytical payload for the Pegasus Missile. We were tasked to build the BATSAT which had full computerized stand alone data acquisition system which monitored internal parameters within the missile fairing to determine conditions prior to launch at altitude.
F-18 Super Hornet Test Stand Upgrade
My company redesigned an existing test stand prior to modification that could only test the regular F-18 GE F404 Jet Engine Lube and scavenge pump. We modified the test stand so it could also be used on the Super Hornet GE F414 Jet Engine components.
ALL Helicopter Hydraulic Test System
My company designed this system to test hydraulic component use on board almost all rotary winged aircraft. This was a firm fixed price contract and our acceptance tests exceeded requirements. What was usual about this effort was that the customer reneged on the test stand acceptance but we successfully sued for the costs. The problem was that the customer did not write the specification to include all the specialized support gear which they expected. The customer could have ordered this gear as a contract add-on.
Gravity Negation Test System
This test system is still in use today at NASA. It is fully portable and light weight; and has been used at NASA Goddard and NASA Kennedy, then carted around the world for use in testing satellite antennas and solar arrays deployment final insurance test prior to launch. If the deployables don’t deploy the satellite fails.
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Technicians preparing for Test.
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Satellite Launch (NASA).
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XTE SPACECRAFT (NASA).
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