About Me

I am a retired airplane product development engineer. I live in "Big Sky" country near Bozeman Montana.

I've always been interested in solar energy projects, but moving to an 8000 degree-day climate, and living in a house that is about as bad a solar design as one could imagine picked up my interest quite a bit.

While trying to find good solar heating ideas for my house, I noted that there is not much on the web for people who have some build-it skills, and would like to tackle a solar project -- thus came the idea for this web site.

I like doing hands-on projects, especially ones that involve building prototypes to test new concepts -- thus came the "Experimental" area of this site.

Here are a couple of my past prototypes:

<< A prototype of an inflatable heliostat and me. I'm the one on the right. Its described in detail under the "Experimental" tab.

This is a full sized taxi simulator for the 777-300 -- it is 160 ft long, weighs 33,000 lb, and has a diesel powered hydro-static drive. Top speed 12 knots! We built it to make sure that the 777-300 (the longest commercial transport in the world) could taxi around existing airports OK. Lots of fun.

My email: Gary