Paul's Portfolio

Hello and welcome to my webpage.

US Navy

I first joined the U.S. Navy while I was still in high school, I signed on to become an Aviation Electronics Technician for 6 years so I could go to an extended electronics school.

Navy Training completed:

1983 - Basic electricity and electronics course with received a letter of accommodation (BE&E)
1984 - Avionics Technician Course, Class A1 (AVA)
1984 - Advanced First Term Avionics Course, Class A1 (AFTA)
1984 - Avionics Corrosion Control
1989 - Avionics Intermediate Course, Class C7 – Received letter of Accommodation for scholastic average of 92.73% (AVIC7)
1989 - Leadership management and education training (LMET)
1989 - IFF, Identification Friend or Foe, Systems training
1990 - Navy Alcohol and Drug Safety Program (NADASP)
1991 - Navy Leader Development program for leading petty officers (NLDP)

Duty stations:

NATTC Millington, TN - 1983-1984 one year of schooling
1988-1989 one year of schooling
NAS Agana, Guam - 3.5 years, working both Organization Level maintenance on CH46 helicopters and Intermediate Level maintenance trouble shooting and repairing communications equipment to component level. Was Night shift Supervisor and Collateral duty inspector. (Quality control inspector)
NAS Miramar, CA - 3 years working Intermediate level maintenance on IFF Systems and other communications equipment. Was weekend shift Supervisor and Collateral duty inspector.
NAS North Island, CA - 2 years working Intermediate Level maintenance on IFF systems both shore, and on the USS Constellation, and on the USS Ranger during Operation Desert Storm. Was a Collateral duty inspector. On the USS Ranger I engineered with only the components I could find on board ship, a 14 Mhz bandpass filter for the MARS station (Armature radio station) I received sailor of the month for my efforts. The bandpass filter made it possible so all members of the crew could make calls home via amature radio stations in emergency situations (this was before cell phones).
Shortly after I was Honorably discharged from active duty, I joined the US Navy reserves where I worked on C-9 aircraft on the organizational level.

Custom Assembly Technologies

I was first hired as a Quality Control Inspector on 2^nd shift, I was responsible for quality of the electronic assemblies that our company produced. From time to time I would check in with the testing department to see if there were any quality issues cropping up and I would help the technicians when they couldn’t figure out what was wrong with a circuit card. After the manager became aware of this, he promoted me to first shift Test department supervisor. I had 12 technicians working for me. I kept detailed records of what was tested, what failed, time to fix, and who worked on the failed item.

Diversified Machine, Inc.

After i was Honorably discharged from the Navy Reserves I moved back to Minnesota and talked to a friend of mine I had known since high school, and went to work for him at Diversified Machine. At the time I didn’t know what a PLC was, my first machine was sitting on the floor being built, and I designed the electrical system using relay logic (I think the maintenance people who got that machine were cussing me out since the schematic was drawn like an electronics circuit and not a ladder style schematic...oh well).

I have been at Diversified machine now for a little over 15 years. I am basically the entire Electrical Department, if it has a wire--it was mine to fix, design, or program or all of the above. I have designed many machines from very simple 2-component machines to extremely complicated multi axis servo machines. I have used such a variety of different controllers in my time there due to customer requests. I have used ladder logic, flow charts, function blocks, structured text, and visual basic on an industrial PC to control machines.