From: John Larkin
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: Kevin, Kevin, Kevin.....Re: Questions on EE job market.
Date: Fri, 01 Nov 2002 10:21:51 -0800
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On Thu, 31 Oct 2002 21:54:41 -0800, "Leeper"
wrote:
>Oh Kevin, Kevin, Kevin
>
>Thanks for all the laughter.
>
>I spent 12 years in the US Marines repairing Avionics to the
>component (resistor, cap, transistor, etc) level. I also ran around
>carrying other Marines during NBC drills, shooting rifles, running over 20
>miles a week and many other, Marine type things. During this time
>I didn't learn specifically how to design circuits, but I sure had fun
>deducing
>how they worked to a point to determine where a failure occured, and the
>specific component that was causing the issue.
>
>I sure found piles of design errors during my time, and also wondered
>at some of the absolutely marvelous designs I had a chance to pour over.
>One of the neatest was a box 3 feet long, six inches high, and a foot and a
>half wide, that put out over 10kW continuous, and much, much higher levels
>when pulsed, each box designed for bands located from 300kHz to 22Ghz.
>Receivers that picked up and processed signals of -156 dbm at the antenna
>were alot of fun to optimize, and even more fun to troubleshoot.
>
>I got out of the military, on a 36,000.00 bonus to get out, then started at
>Flir Systems Incorporated, in the production area, and within the first
>year, I was promoted three times and actually sent off a six figure tax
>return.
>
>It did not take me long to actually improve the performance of many of their
>airborne systems by an order of magnitude which allowed a whole new
>generation of products. Even got a nice bonus for doing this, and helped
>them to avoid some pending lawsuits in doing so. And there were dozens
>of design issues that I rectified on top of it all, one of the very worst I
>have ever ran into was caused by a design done by BSI in the UK.
>
>(we could mention the three senior software guys and two EEs that spent six
>months working on the problem, which I got involved when the production
>folks had a box of bad boards, no fixtures or equipment to troubleshoot on,
>and I put it in a systemto troubleshoot. Someone was tri-stating the
>outputs of 8 RS-432 transmitters to multiplex to one receiver, which allow
>the receiver input to float to unknown states. Guess what? The poor fellas
>had spent six months of their lives tearing their hair out and many long
>hours. I brought them a simple fix, one involving three resistors that
>defined a logical zero state during the tri-state time, thus helping to
>prevent corrupted data words....guess it was just the state of the art in
>design skills of UK engineers, employed by BSI....wink.....but I digress...)
>Or we could mention the engineers that hung 23,000pf of lightening
>protection on a Maxim MAX232 RS-232 RX and TX lines in their designs that
>they made for many, many years, until I came along and found some "minor"
>issues...heheh, poor little charge pumps/over stressed output stages...then
>expected it to shoot a nice clean signal across a aircraft harness.)
>
>Since that time I have become a Design engineer, working on project such as
>this, http://www.upsat.com/mx20_gen.shtml
>
>The US Marines did teach me how to kick ass, hit a partial man sized target
>at 500 meters, 10 out of 10 times, with a standard issue M-16A2 service
>rifle, in wind, rain, snow or whatever, without any aid of a scope. I had a
>chance to see much of the world, meet all sorts of interesting people,
>appreciate what we have right here in the USA, work on a team where our
>lives depended directly on our individual skills, learn more about
>leadership than I'd ever learn anywhere else, shape the lives of hundreds of
>young men, and work with equipment that many engineers only dream of.
>
>I can say, it took me awhile to get over the habit of dressing down
>engineers and others, over their gross incompentence. For anyone that was
>on the receiving end of my dressing downs, I sincerely appologize, we all
>know humans are not perfect, especially myself.
>
>What did I do exactly while I was in?
>
>Marine Corps personnel with the Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) 6484,
>Aircraft Electronic Countermeasures Systems/RADCOM/CAT-IIID Technician, IMA
>EA-6B
>http://usmilitary.about.com/library/milinfo/marineenjobs/bl6484.htm
>
>MOS 6482, Aircraft Electronic Countermeasures Systems Technician, Fixed
>Wing, IMA EA-6A
>http://usmilitary.about.com/library/milinfo/marineenjobs/bl6482.htm
>
>MOS 6423, Aviation Electronic Microminiature/Instrument and Cable Repair
>Technician, IMA
>http://usmilitary.about.com/library/milinfo/marineenjobs/bl6423.htm
>
>MOS 6445 Aircraft Inertial Navigation System/Flight System/Automatic Carrier
>Landing System Mini-SACE Technician, A-6E/EA-6B/E2-C
>
>MOS 6465 Hybrid Test Set Technician, IMA
>The AN/USM-484 Hybrid Test System (HTS) is a general purpose Automatic Test
>Equipment (ATE) system that fault isolates Weapon Replaceable Assemblies
>(WRA) and Shop Replaceable Assemblies (SRA) associated with complex avionics
>packages installed in modern aircraft weapon systems. The HTS is employed by
>Navy and Marine Corps Intermediate Maintenance Activities (IMA) and depot
>level maintenance activities in support of the AV-8B, EA-6B, F-14, F/A-18,
>S-3B, and SH-60B Aircraft. In addition, the HTS provides off-line
>maintenance support for the AN/USM-470(V)1 Avionics Test Set.
>
>MOS 6467 Aircraft Forward Looking Infrared/Electro-Optical, Weapons Delivery
>Systems, RADAR Systems Technician, IMA Mini-SACE and RADCOM/CAT-IIID (I
>held this over quite a time span, as the equipment switched and the systems
>the MOS repaired changed) EA-6B, A-6E TRAM, EA-6A, C-130, and other
>airframes
>
>I actually spent four years in classroom training, 8 hours a day, for all
>those MOSes, over my 12 years. Some of it was even at the companies, like
>Allied Bendix Aerospace and Teledyne Ryan, with the circuit design
>engineers, stepping through the schematics, and the functions of each and
>every component on those schematics.
>
>I always enjoyed pointing out design issues with those very same engineers
>who designed the circuits, several times Naval Messages were sent directly
>to the various military commands utilizing exactly the same equipment with
>those circuits in the fleet, for immediate action.
>
>I had no college education up to the point of leaving the military, except
>one class at Embry-Riddle Areonatical University, as an Alegbra refresher.
>
>Lol Kevin, you talk about the military folks like they were a bag of rocks,
>and I can assure you, while it may be that way in some specialties, in other
>areas, it is quite the contrary.
>
>
Leeper,
fascinating! Would you please tell us more about how wonderful you
are?
John