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Real Aviation Experience: I am the penultimate
aerogeek, and have been since I was four or five. Show me a picture of
an airplane and I'll identify it. I soloed a Cessna 150 on my sixteenth
birthday and have a hundred hours or so logged in my log book, but due
to various reasons (primarily financial) I never finished training or received
my private pilot license. Because of my various aviation related jobs and
experience as an airport bum, however, I have stick and throttle time in
many varied aircraft, ranging from high performance homebuilts like the
Rutan Long-Eze and Defiant, to big antique DC-3s, to Schweitzer sailplanes,
to commuter aircraft like the Cessna 414, and to spam cans such as the
Beech Duchess and Grumman Tiger. Attended two years of college persuing
aerospace engineering before discovering a loathing of higher math and
dropping out to become a surf bum. Didn't take long before my "Type A"
personality and beach life clashed. I have been employed for the past nine
years as Purchasing Manager at Scaled Composites, Inc (http://www.scaled.com),
a Skunk Works-like aerospace R & D company founded and owned by design
guru Burt Rutan. Specializing in the design,tooling, fabrication, and flight
test of composite structure air & spacecraft, we make really cool toys;
and I get to find & buy all the parts for them.
I now am proudly conversant in all things combat sim (got
the scars to prove it), and embroiled in an epic struggle to build a simulator
cockpit (aka Huge Waste of Time & Resources) dubbed the MachPit. The
MachPit's progress (or lack thereof) can be viewed at http://machpit.homepage.com.
 
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SimPIts Officer
USA