Hello and Welcome!

Hi, I'm Bill Garber, retired Aerospace and High-volume InkJet Pen Engineer, and Ham Radio Operator (WG0R)

I was born in Mercy Hospital San Diego, a second-generation San Diegan.  My mother was born in a house in Downtown San Diego overlooking the Bay.  My grandparents moved from New York in 1898 and stayed at the Hotel Del Coronado, among the first guests.  Our family lived in Linda Vista, a suburb of San Diego when I was born. When I was in the middle of the 6th grade, we moved to Point Loma.  I became interested in whales and the ocean early on after the move, and after having had a nightmare about a Tsunami washing over the Point.  We lived a mile from the beach, and uphill quite an elevation (a couple hundred feet) from the ocean level, which made this dream moot, but got my attention just the same.  I attended Silvergate Elementary school, Dana Junior High, and Point Loma High School. A friend, Ron, in High School and I each built an Heathkit AR-3 receiver, with the help of an electrical engineer who lived across the back alley from me.  It was the spark that lit my interest in my ultimate career in Engineering. The neighborhood kids all made our own skateboards by nailing the separated skate components which had two wheels each to the front and back of pieces of wood.  Most of them were about the size of current-day skateboards, but one friend, Jeff, had a 4-foot long one made using a 4X4 inch board😀.

 In Wood-shop, I constructed my own Balsa Wood Surfboard that weighed 30 pounds.  I used to carry it down to surf, and discovered a few things about the construction.  One of the quirks of my surfboard was that it oscillated when you rode a fairly large wave, which was a bit unsettling, but gave you a foot massage anyway!  I also learned that keeping the Skeg attached was an art that escaped me.  In addition to that, I was taught a valuable lesson that it was unsafe to surf when it was "Closed Out," by coming within a second of drowning, being tossed around like a rag-doll until my right shoulder made contact with the sand, and I was able to thrust myself to the surface, just to meet another wave that put me under again.  This was before the invention of tethers that attached the board to your leg.  I made it to shore and sat next to my board that had washed up on the beach, shook my head and spent a bit of time pondering what had just happened, and counted 17 lines of "soup"!  It was then I learned that I wasn't invincible!  However I "got back on the horse" with a Hobie foam board which was much better design and fabrication!

I was a mediocre student, but managed to graduate at age 17 in 1961  from Point Loma High School (PLHS). 

I then attended San Diego City College for 1.5 years studying Core courses.

Our family moved to Manhattan Beach in 1963, due to my Dad being laid off from Convair (because Howard Hughes reneged on taking delivery of a few dozen aircraft), along with ~20% of the company.  The goal was for us to open a Western Auto store in El Segundo, but that did not happen as planned, unfortunately.  My family subsequently opened an ice cream store in Burbank. (Celebrities, like Ron Howard, the Fearsome Foursome, Billy Kidd, Walt Disney's private pilot, etc. used to come in).  

I studied Electronics Technology (AA degree) at El Camino College in Torrance, and finally got my educational act together; took one term at USC, in History, to meet the El Camino graduation requirements, then went "1A" in the draft, due to not holding a full-time course load.  

I joined the Air Force in Feb. 1965, and went into Ground Radio repair at Keesler AFB, MS, opening up barracks that hadn't been used since WWII.  I spent most of my AF time at Boron AFS, in the Mojave Desert.  SR-71s, and B-70s used to routinely fly over, as the site was on the Final Approach radial of Edwards AFB runway 20.  I worked on Communication systems, including a Digital one that provided vectoring data to control F-106 Fighters , and in other missile locations to their targets.

After getting out, and working a short while at Collins Radio (now Rockwell Collins) in Newport Beach, I was hired at Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena in January 1970, and met my wife, Sharon there.  (We both worked on the Viking Mars landers and Voyager spacecraft, and have our signatures on the Microdots aboard the Vikings, which are on the Martian surface). (We are among the first to have our signatures on another planet). I was the Principal Test Engineer for Radiation testing, after Pioneer 10 flew by Jupiter and experienced MASSIVE , unexpected radiation bombardment. The results of the radiation testing were used to design shielding for the Voyager spacecraft (Who are now still sending data back from outside the Solar system, 45 years later). Amazingly, they transmit with only 20 Watts of power (as much [or little] as a refrigerator light-bulb) and are now at a distance of almost a light-year from us. The received power is less than a Million-Billionth of a Watt!  

I Completed a BSEE degree while working at JPL in 1976.  I joined Aerojet Electrosystems and worked in Test Engineering of several Army, Navy, and Air Force Defense projects, including improvements to the second generation Defense Support Program Satellite that (sort of) replaced the Boron AFS capability.  I was  a Test and Evaluation engineer for the Sensor Evolution Development (SED) program for the Defense Support Program (DSP) satellite at Aerojet. The DSP satellites are geosynchronous spacecraft that are used to detect missile launches around the World: one of which was instrumental in targeting the Scud missiles in the first Gulf War; allowing defensive missiles to neutralize the Scuds fired by Iraq.    I put my ’Stamp-of-Approval’ (literally) on the circuit designs for the “Above-the-Horizon” (ATH) and "Below-the-Horizon" (BTH) amplifiers that processed the signals from the thousands of sensors, as well as  approving the schematic circuit design of the complex circuit for the Analog-to-Digital Converter that converted the signals in one system clock-cycle.  I was also a member of the team who resolved issues which occurred in Incoming material for the program, and issued reports to the customer regarding resolution of the issues.  Aerojet and Bill were also involved in other Air Force, Army, Navy and commercial development programs.  Sharon and I have been honored to have our names on the Air and Space Museum "Wall of Honor"; having been nominated as a result of our JPL and Aerojet experiences https://airandspace.si.edu/support/wall-of-honor/william-and-sharon-garber .  I also worked on the Lawrence Livermore Labs SHIVA Nuclear Fusion project "Pointing, Focusing, and Centering" systems and Submarine Countermeasure systems for NAVSEA at Aerojet.  

Our family moved to the Northwest (Corvallis, OR) in May 1980, just before St. Helens blew, where I took a job at HP.  We were making 41C and other calculators, and HP-85 computers.  I studied for a Masters in Statistics at Oregon State University.  twenty-one years later. After working to make other calculators (48G, etc.), palmtop and notebook computers, and many travels to France, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, I worked as a Systems Engineer in the expanding Inkjet pen development.  In 2005, I took early retirement from HP and my final HP position as Architect of electrical test systems (used in various phases of Inkjet Pen production in sites around the World). I worked a couple years as a Software Test Engineer for a gaming company, International Game Technology (IGT), then for a contractor to HP in pen characterization development tools.  I ultimately retired in 2014 from my Engineering career to focus on my Ham Radio activities.  In 2019, I received the "Worked All States" and "Worked All Continents" awards from the American Radio Relay League and International Amateur Radio Union, respectively.

Sharon retired from Oregon State University.  We have three children, ranging from 56 to 36.  

Our oldest daughter, Kathryn, is married to Steve, a Navy Rear Admiral (Upper Half).  Kathryn majored in Marketing at Oregon State University, the first of our three "Beaver-graduate" kids.  She is a clothing designer and has outfitted their two daughters' high school with costumes for plays.  She also was the lead seller of property  for a realtor. They live in Maryland, and one of their daughters graduated in Forensic Science from Penn State, and the other is attending Penn State as a junior, majoring in Nursing.  

Our son, Bill, is Director of Government and External Affairs at the Appraisal Institute in Washington, D.C., the Nation's largest professional organization of real estate appraisers.  He and his wife, Kerry, have three sons and a daughter. Kerry is a teacher and has taught English-as-a-Second-Language at several schools. As expected, with four kids, they're very active in their kid's activities: taekwondo, robotics, gaming, school activities, boating on their nearby lake, etc.. 

Our youngest daughter, Jen, is a Board-Certified Critical Care Pharmacist at two Portland Oregon hospitals, both of which are Level-1 Critical Care facilities.  She is Immediate Past-President of the Oregon Chapter of the Society of Critical Care Medicine, and is on the front line of the COVID-19 response teams at the two hospitals.  Her husband, Brandon, was a Support Engineer for Virtualization at CDW, and has been "fortunate" to have been in a position working remotely before the current crisis hit, so was already in place at home when it hit. He has recently been promoted and is tasked with forming a new team and hiring top-level engineers in the Virtualization field.

I have a Sister, Bev, in Texas, who is an artist "heartfeltart.us" and who is also very active in multiple organizations involved with Aviation and Military retirees.

I am a Ham Radio Operator (Callsign WG0R), and enjoy golfing, skiing, and I achieved my Private Pilot license in 1999.  Sharon and I enjoy driving our C4 Corvette on special occasions. I am enjoying working the World with my Ham Radio "Rig," with voice and digital modes, using a wire antenna strung between two of our oak trees out in the backyard.  I received the aforementioned "Worked All..."  awards after contacting all 50 states and all six continents (Antarctica is not part of the requirements, due to the sparse Ham activity there) [Although, I did make a rare contact with a Navassa Island "DXpedition" (Distance Expedition) that was the second-most sought-after Ham Radio location to contact [right after North Korea!]

Please visit my profile on LinkedIn, as well. (Search keywords: "bill garber sr wg0r linkedin qrz ". WG0R  is my Ham Radio Callsign (Note the third character in "WG0R" is 'ZERO').  (Think of "William Garber Oregon (OR), but replace the 'O' with a "Zero".)  If you are reading this, congratulations!  You have gone through the WG0R process & are here👍

Please message me if you have trouble. 

Also, if you do Google "WG0R," you should be able to see another view of my working experience and Ham activities on the "QRZ" Ham site that, for me, began with Electrical Engineer Hal Crispell, who was the one who lived across the alley from us in the '50s, and helped Ron Heikes (PLHS '62) and me build receiver kits in '58, a Ham Adventure not explored by me again until 2009.  There are some HTML links, as well, to other info in that website.

(See below for this content)