"The Weiss Family" wrote in message
...

"NW_PILOT" wrote in message
...
I have been in the IT field writing code for IC chips & PCB design for
the
last 8 year's.


Where are you at? I've been doing similar things out on the West Coast.
FPGA design, Firmware, PCB design, and even software.
If you can stand CA, there's a ton of work (even now).
I couldn't, so I came back to NV, which has a growing tech economy.
Companies like GE, IGT, etc.

My wife and kids have gotten too accustomed to our lifestyle for me to not
be an engineer (although I can still dream).
Anyway, I'm still trying to work up to buying that first plane. I think
within the next 12-18 months I will make my first purchase.

Then I'll do what was mentioned: work all week to fly all weekend.

At the end of the day, I still enjoy being an engineer, though.
I'm pretty lucky with my job, I get to jump around and do SW, HW, FW,
FPGAs,
etc, so I don't get too bored of the same thing...

Adam



I am in Portland, OR I will not ever move from this area again! I work for
myself I used to subcontract out to other company's and do their overflow
work it used to be steady work, Most of my work was coding for
microcontrollers and pcb design for small business, most customers projects
went only to prototype and small run production's. I have had a many go to
large scale production. I have excellent relations with my contract mfg's in
Hong Kong. I still get kicker checks in the mail when one of the larger
customers dose a reorder. That side of the industry is going away to
overseas company's. Korea is taking a lot of it away from the US market.
What is still going strong is the replacement & programming of SMT devices.
I can program over 11,000 different IC's and have full SMT rework shop. I
can handle most any surface mount rework contracts.

I was almost thinking of contracting out to aviation radio shops to fix
things they are not equipped to do like their SMT work "narco, gps, ect" but
not sure of the legal requirements would be if any to replace a part in
aircraft electronics then have the radio shop do all the final testing
certifying.