Assisted take-off [My First Job]

I was lucky to be hired straight out of high school by one of the U.S. Air Force's "superlabs," the then-named Rome Air Development Center (RADC) on Griffiss Air Force Base in upstate New York. I was hired as an electronics engineering trainee in the summer of 1984, starting the morning after my high school graduation. RADC (which became Rome Laboratory and is now part of the Air Force Research Laboratory), performed basic research and development in communications, radar, intelligence, and command and control.