My professional career and my interest in audio are related.

My journey into audio, and eventually home theater, began as soon as I was able to enjoy my father’s Heathkit amplifier and 4-way speaker system sourced from an H. H. Scott turntable. The loudspeaker kit consisted of two Klipsch-designed, Jensen driven enclosures with an 8” woofer and rectangular horn in one box on a larger corner-fitting range extension base containing a 15” woofer and a small tweeter. Quite a magnificent sound for the home in the late 50's and early 60's. About a year ago I saw a pair of these sell on eBay for $1400.

My interest in electricity and electronics began with my grandfather’s smile and Lionel trains. He was an electrical engineer. As an infant, I would be held up to a wall light switch and be excited that my pushing the switch at one location could turn a light on and off at another location – an early showing of the male affinity for ‘remotes?’ My first word was “Ight,” short for “light.” In early adolescence, I tinkered with high-voltage and related projects that began with my acquiring an early 1900’s book called The Boy Electrician. This eventually led me to learn about tube-based amplifier and radio circuits.

Quite a few years later, and these two interests were fused as I bought a half-working Realistic solid-state stereo amplifier for $25 with paper-route earnings, traced the parallel circuits of the left and right channels until I found a bad soldier connection and restored the full functioning of the unit. With this working, and a new stereo cartridge, I resurrected my father’s turntable and loudspeaker, and used them along with another loudspeaker my grandfather had built. In the early 1970’s, 25 watts-per-channel RMS could really rock the house with such efficient speakers.

Combine this mix with an interest in performance drama and photography through high school, let the television production bug bite me as part of a studio audience and some time behind the scenes with the director and technical director, then add a few years of EE and mass communication education, and technical video production is where I’ve spent the better part of the last three decades professionally - educational audio and video in the late 70's, radio and television broadcasting in the Middle East in the early 80's, video editing and related production into the early 90's, indepedent large video/audio display production for trade shows, conventions and the occasional music video, commercial or film until 2001, now government news and information television production in Washington, DC.

My other pastime is hydrofoil sailing (I gave up a motorcycle years ago, so the boat is my ‘pocket rocket’), which gets me out in good weather and helps me keep and learn skills related to sailing and modifying boats. Do some web-browsing for the Windrider Rave sailing hydrofoil if you’re interested.