Joel Kolstad wrote:

Michael,

If you don't mind my asking, what sort of professional electron wrangling did
you do prior to becoming disabled?

Good luck on converting your garage... I think there's a good chance you can
get a decent amount of equipment and supplies donated once it's clear (to the
outside world) that you're serious about what you're doing.

----Joel

I worked for L-3com/Microdyne at their Ocala plant as a production
and engineering tech. I also worked with purchasing to find and qualify
replacement sources for components, and the nasty job of removing long
time vendors from our approved list. I worked in every area of the
product line, built test fixtures, wrote test procedures and fought the
apathy of a couple older engineers to fix old design problems. I knew
more about our oldest products than anyone in engineering, so when a
problem cropped up they came running to my bench to ask questions rather
than take the time to research the old records. The last product I
worked on was their RCB-2000, a dual DSP based telemetry receiver, to
take it from the engineering prototypes to the production floor. I was
laid off when my health no longer let me work overtime, even though I
did more in an eight hour shift than any two other people on the line.
Suddenly, I was deemed "Not a team player" because I could barely walk
out the door after my shift. I was troubleshooting and testing the
signal processing boards under a stereo microscope and I did most of my
own rework rather than wait for it to go through the rework department.
I hand soldered 288 pin SMD chips under the microscope. After the
cleaning room was done, QC couldn't find my work on the PC boards. This
radio was introduced to the market at about $80,000. One of the VME
based boards in it cost about $8,000 to stuff, reflow and test. I miss
the work, but I doubt that I'll be able to do that kind of work again,
and the high tech companies have pretty well left this part of the
country.


--
Former professional electron wrangler.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida