Today is the National Aviation Day. A unique day that celebrates the development of aviation. This is a special day to me since it is an echo of the first half of my career. Currently I live and breathe coffee, but before 2017 I was engulfed in the world of aviation. From manufacturing, operations and research, I had over 21 years with 30 jobs in aviation. Why so many jobs? In one simple term: contractor. There were a few jobs as a ‘direct hire,’ but most were contract so I could enjoy the fun of traveling, acquire unique experience on shorter projects and move on to the next one. The reason of why I jumped into aviation in the first place was because of the influence of a magical place close to where I grew up; Dayton, Ohio.

This is the home of some of the most famous inventors including the Wright Brothers, Charles Kettering, John Janning and more. In fact, we had the highest per capita invention ratio for any city in the US in 1890 (1). The culture of invention brought new organizations like the Barn Gang to create a foundation for their efforts quickly inventing the electric starter for cars. The Barn Gang would eventually became DELCO (2).

I loved aviation growing up, it was a part of our pride in this city. With Dayton’s rich community of inventors in the late 1800’s, it is no wonder the Wright Brothers caught the bug of invention and joined the tides to push the boundaries. Even though their 1903 Wright Flyer is in the Smithsonian in Washington DC, their rich history is detailed in an even bigger and older aviation museum, the Wright Patterson Air Force Museum located where? Here in Dayton, Ohio of course.

Before starting in aviation I finished a 2 year education in electronics engineering at Miami Valley Career Technology Center (MVCTC). This replaced my junior and senior years of high school and gave me a huge skillset in electronics before graduating. Then I left to my first real job in aviation creating wire harnesses and installing them into airplanes. This wasn’t that exciting so I quickly shifted into aviations technician work; I thoroughly enjoyed troubleshooting avionics systems on airplanes.

Who enjoys writing technical manuals? I did actually. My daily tasks involved writing the maintenance I used to perform in operations (aka line maintenance). It was fun because I loved aviation. Everyone has to create boring spreadsheets and research something, but when the subject matter is exciting and continually evolving the typically mundane tasks shift to fun challenges of learning and development making a difference in the aviation field for others to benefit from in some way. And in this case, that was to make their tasks as easy as possible to perform maintenance if something broke (corrective maintenance) or prevent something from breaking (preventive maintenance). Many years later I would get pulled into another fun challenge: reliability engineering.

What is reliability engineering? It is better known as R&M engineering Logistics Engineering (or logistics/aka loggy). My job was to perform an analysis (so many...) on the engineering of each system, sub-system and component of an airplane and identify if anything needs to be re-engineered and then define what level of maintenance will be performed in order to help the aircraft meet the life cycle requirements defined. Doesn’t that sound like fun?! Yes and yes! This was the down and dirty work of digging through someone’s design and then essentially troubleshooting it to see if they missed anything. The creative aspect involved in troubleshooting the results was definitely my love language.

.In the end of my aviation career I would finish with 5 years at NASA on ISS (international space station) helping train astronauts on the instructions I crafted, The Spaceship Company, helping define maintenance for WK2 and SS2 (White Knight 2, Spaceship 2) and finally KSU (Kansas State University) as a researcher for an FAA project for UAS (unmanned aircraft systems) helping define maintenance requirements for UAS.

Working at NASA is definitely the highlight of my career, but being a part of projects that are a 'first' or even a 'one off' were always a huge part of enjoyment in being in aviation. 

Today my career is in specialty coffee for Third Wave Water, helping people around the world find the best water for their coffee. We were on the TV show Shark Tank in 2017 and continue to learn and grow with this amazing coffee culture.