Much as I'd like to take credit for playing any part in the development
of the NEC codes, I can't. NEC-2 and its successors were developed
mainly at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and I had no part in
that work. What I did was to first take MININEC (developed independently
by John Logan and Jay Rockway) and make a usable interface for it. This
program was called ELNEC. Later, I adapted the interface to NEC-2,
naming the result EZNEC. ELNEC and EZNEC are really interfaces to the
underlying calculating engines, which I had no part in developing.

I'll second Jason's reminder that there's a lot more to EE than RF. In
my career, I've designed video test equipment including a very fancy TV
camera, slow scan video instruments, switching power supplies,
micropower vehicular speed recording and data logging equipment, very
high speed pulse generation and sampling gear, high precision samplers,
delay line compensation networks, infrared imaging equipment, time bases
and other oscilloscope circuitry, and many other types of equipment.
Traditional RF circuitry is more a part of my hobby than my career,
although as Jason said, I've done some consulting work in that field.

And those of us who are engineers weren't born that way. I began as a
ham when I was a kid, studied for and got my FCC commercial license,
worked as a broadcast engineer and then chief engineer, went through the
Air Force radar school, worked as a radar technician, and fixed radios,
TVs, and telephone answering machines before working my way through
school (with a bit of help from Uncle S.) first as a technician then as
a design engineer. People following a path like that can "get off" at
any point where the work is satisfying and interesting.

Right now and for the foreseeable future, it looks like there are
opportunities in EMC (electromagnetic compatibility -- EMI reduction).
With the proliferation of wireless devices, the EMC environment is
getting tougher and tougher. Antenna design seems to be in steady
demand. And there's plenty of work for a good analog or analog/digital
engineer, and technicians, in a wide variety of small, mostly startup
companies. I haven't seen age as an issue -- in fact, it seems that
there aren't many young folks learning some of these skills. If you can
do the job, you should be able to get a job.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL

Jason Hsu wrote:
Have your circuit-building activities led you to a career? I know Roy
does RF engineering consulting work and is most famous for NEC code
for antenna simulation. . .