First Programming Experience
I took my first programming course during the mid-eighties at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, LA. The language was PASCAL. The instructor was oriental. And, I found I really enjoyed the class and made an easy "A".
My major at that time was Math Ed. The main motivation for a Math Ed degree was to position myself to take advantage of overseas teaching jobs. I had a strong desire to expose my children to other cultures besides what we know in the good ole U.S. of A.
About the Author
David was born and raised in South Louisiana where his last name is pronounced "Row Bear". After high school graduation in 1973 he completed Army Flight School. Then he spent 2 years in the Republic of South Korea where he became a Buffer Zone and TAC Zone pilot and check pilot. After making CW2 and turning 21 he returned to Fort Rucker, Alabama and became a Contact, Tactics, NOE, Night Hawk, and Night Vision Goggle instructor pilot for initial entry students. David left active duty in 1979 and flew for a year over the Gulf of Mexico for Petroleum Helicopters. He then worked two seasons for Rocky Mountain Helicopters in the western states and Alaska. David then returned to Army Flight School as an Instrument Contract Instructor Pilot. It was during this time that he married his wife, Jo who became the mother of Dave's five children.
David then took a four year break from flying during which time he visited friends, went to school, made hammocks, and worked for a civil engineering and surveying firm. David then went to work for Air Evac Lifeteam for 4.5 years.
David then took a six year break from flying where he attempted to start his own company producing and marketing a poor man’ s GPS. During this six years David again worked for another civil engineering and surveying firm to help make ends meet and finally returned to college to complete a BS degree in Computer Science at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, AR. Soon after graduating he returned to Air Evac Lifeteam as a pilot and worked for 5 years until being medically grounded. David is currently brushing up on his computer skills and hopes to once again earn a pay check whether it is working for himself or someone else.
David enjoys, family, mountain biking, writing, photography, computer programming and web design.
The November/December 2003 issue of the Air Medical Journal published David's article: "Minimizing the Dark"
After my PASCAL class I would have liked to have changed my major to Computer Science, except my "crystal ball" was broken. I figured a CS degree would never amount to more than 25K a year and always being stuck inside in a small office.
Even though I was maintaining a 4.0 grade point average, because of personal reasons I dropped out of school at SLU after completing only a couple of semesters.
After dropping out of school I moved my family from South Louisiana to the Ozarks of North Central Arkansas where I eventually went to work for Air Evac Lifeteam (AEL) as an EMS helicopter pilot.
Dispatch Solutions
In Air Evac's early days a lone dispatcher stayed in a room not much bigger than a walk in closet with a single telephone. When a request for a helicopter came in the dispatcher found out the name of the closest little community and then referenced a "Pilot's Information Guide" (PIG) to look up the latitude and longitude coordinates for the community that needed assistance. After finding the correct coordinates, the dispatcher then manually plotted the coordinates on a large wall map. After plotting the scene location the dispatcher then visually compared the scene location to the three bases AEL had back then. The dispatcher selected the closest available base for dispatch.
The dispatchers loved my new program. Once the scene coordinates were entered the distances and headings from each base were calculated. Color coded seventy nautical mile radius circles were drawn around each base with color coded course lines emanating from each base to the scene. The closest base was colored green for "go", the next base was colored yellow for "caution", and the third base was colored red for "stop". Distance and heading from each base was also displayed. This program stayed in use until AEL eventually grew beyond their three bases sometime after I left AEL in 1995.
Base Automation
I transferred to AE4 in Springfield, AR in January of 1993. There I decided to take on automating the typical paperwork process for the base. Every Flight generated a Trip Ticket which was completed by hand by the pilot and faxed to dispatch. A medical crewmember then made an entry into the dispatch log by hand documenting key details of the flight. If anyone wanted to keep track of their total flight time and type of flights the onus was on the individual.
I chose Alpha-4 a relational database for non-programmers for this task. Even though I have programming skills I thought Alpha-4 was a good choice because I did not know how long I would be at AEL and I wanted to leave something someone else who did not have coding skills could inherit and maintain.
This project was highly successful. Everyone at the base loved it. Pilots and medical crewmembers could now print out a 
personal log report showing what they had completed for a selected time frame. Numerous other monthly reports required from the base's lead pilot were now easily generated also.
the Schedule Program
Another substantial program I wrote for the Springdale base was a scheduling program that projected as far into the future as anyone cared to look which pilot would be on duty. Now a days, pilots typically work 7 days on and 7 days off alternating between 12 hour day shifts and night shifts at bases staffed by 4 pilots, so projecting the future is fairly simply. But, initially AEL bases were staffed by 3 pilots who worked 24 hour shifts on what was called a "Kelly Shift" Rotation.
A shift cycle consisted of 9 days. The cycle started with a pilot working his/her first 24 hour shift for the cycle. The pilot then had 24 hours off followed by 24 hours on, followed by 24 hours off, followed by 24 hours on, and followed by 4 days off. Then the cycle repeated itself. Without a huge amount of effort, it was basically impossible for a pilot to look into the future and see what holidays and birthdays they had to work or had off. The base's lead pilot was responsible for completing the pilot schedule each month. The lead pilot typically completed this task just prior to each new month.
My schedule program allowed any given month to be pulled up in a typical calendar format showing who the duty pilot was for every given day. Pilots could now plan far in advance for holidays and birthdays. To complete a new schedule the lead pilot simply had to print the selected month.
I wrote my scheduling program in BASIC because back in those days Microsoft supplied a BASIC translator freely with their operating system. This permitted me to write code on the company computer without having to load my PASCAL or C compiler on their machine. I later bought myself a BASIC compiler so I could compile my programs into executables after development.
a Poor Man's GPS
Scene coordinates given in Latitude and Longitude are the critical element that makes modern day helicopter air ambulance missions practical and doable. In the old days if a VFR pilot could not navigate usingpilotageit did not matter how talented and smooth he was on the controls he was pretty worthless as a pilot especially if the mission required finding a critical location. But, with the invention of the Global Positioning System (GPS) any dummy who can punch in the numbers is good to go. Pilotage is no longer a necessary skill. Acquiring those numbers (Latitude and Longitude) is another matter.
As mentioned previously, a dispatcher used the PIG (Pilot's Information Guide) to look up the closest community to the scene and determine "ball park" Latitude and Longitude. AEL acquired these coordinates for its PIG by doing numerous Public Relation flights to each community and recording the latitude and longitude of the location one at a time. That is a costly and time intensive method. A skilled dispatcher could also find the general location of the scene on the wall map and extract the latitude and longitude from the map.
Extracting latitude and longitude from a map is not the easiest task a person can do. Most of my adult life has been spent working as a pilot. I have also worked for civil engineering and surveying firms. I know how to extract coordinates from a map, but if it has been awhile since I've done it I usually have to scratch my head a little bit and think. This difficulty was the catalyst for my next program: a Coordinate Extraction System (CES) My CES basically amounted to a poor man's GPS. I knew GPS technology was on the way. Once GPS became ubiquitous I knew my system would become obsolete. But, I had a window of opportunity. So, I resigned from AEL in April of 1995 and established EREP (Emergency Response Enhancement Products) to produce, market, and seek a patent on my creation.
My Coordinate Extraction System consisted of a software program that required the input of a heading and distance from a know point on a map and then calculated and output the latitude and longitude of the point at the other end of the heading and distance from the known point. An appropriately modified map made determining the heading and distance to a scene much easier than determining the latitude and longitude from the map. Here is my original prototype map. It has a compass rose inscribed around a known point and a ruler attached to measure distance. Later I purchased a pen plotter to more professionally modify my maps with a compass rose and distance tic marks that made it extremely easy to determine distance and heading from the known point. I used the very professional and courteous services of Mr. Joseph T. Regard to attempt to obtain my patent. His thorough patent search revealed a similar nautical device that had previously been patented. This along with some other factors caused me to abandon my attempt to obtain a patent and market my Coordinate Extraction System.
To Be Continued...
Up Date August 2008
As I read entrepreneurial books, blogs, and forums one of the biggest themes that seems to be encountered over and over is: “don’t quit”. But, reality sometimes beyond our control dictates that the only reasonable thing to do is quit or be likened to Don Quixote chasing windmills. Well, the Coordinate Extraction System and EREP came to an end.
I did have other things I was interested in pursuing along computer science lines and felt that returning to school to complete a Computer Science degree was the thing to do to help me achieve those goals. So, I enrolled in our local college ASU Mountain Home to earnestly pursue a degree. I completed a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science degree in May of 2001. In my software engineering class I caught a vision for an online web application that I now call ProximityCast. I attempted to interest my best college friend, talented coder, and fellow software engineering project team member into working on ProximityCast with me, but he didn’t share my vision nor fully comprehend the power of GPS and its future so he declined. So many successful startups are the product of two or more founders. Solo founder’s chances of success are severely diminished so I’m told. My friend and I stay in touch and keep an online chess game going.
Graduation meant a time to shift gears. I had projects I wanted to work on, but I needed to make a living too. I interviewed with one company and was not offered a position. The Air Ambulance Company I had previously flown for had opened a new base close enough to my home to enable me to go home after a shift. They had also switched to a 7 day on 7 day off schedule. I had heard about this toward the end of my degree program and actually placed a call to their Director of Operations and Chief Pilot and left a message and number. He never called back. I might have dropped out of school for this job, but decided to complete my degree when he didn’t return my call. Now post graduation something was needed. Moving was not practical for many reasons. The 7 on 7 off schedule appealed to me because it would be a perfect setup to earn a paycheck and have time to work on programming projects, so I placed another call to my former company. This time I spoke to someone and soon found myself back flying.
I had two programming projects at the top of my list I wanted to work on and needed to choose one to focus on. The previous base automation project had been lost when their computer crashed after I had left. The company was rapidly growing and adding bases. I felt this was a useful and necessary project to help the med crews with their paperwork. I also had my ProximityCast project that I was interested in doing. I decided to help my base out first. I also decided that I would not give it away this time. I would automate my base and hope that I could sell the company on automating all their other bases. I used Visual Basic 6 to start the prototype for the automation. The base loved what I did for them. It simplified their paperwork and record keeping tremendously. I was also talking to a fellow friend and pilot at another base about automating their base so I could get a feel for what long distance management would be like. Then I hit my first wrinkle. The company told me not to put anything on any company computers without their permission.
The project was close to being ready to demo. I also had another problem. The copy of Visual Basic 6 was a student version. I needed to update to a legitimate commercial version before I sold any thing. I arraigned a demonstration for the decision makers in the company and set about attempting to acquire a legitimate commercial version of Visual Basic 6. Microsoft was now producing Visual Studio dot net and no longer supporting Visual Basic 6. I didn’t really want to update to Visual Studio since VB6 was meeting my needs. I purchased 3 or 4 copies of VB6 over the internet. Close examination of the EULA proved that each copy although packaged as though apparently legitimate were bogus. A call to Microsoft confirmed this each time. The vendors I had purchased from took each one back and returned my money. Microsoft was really touting Visual Studio as the latest and greatest thing that would get all your projects up to speed quickly. The price was what hurt, but I finally spent the money and bought it. Microsoft said that purchase would upgrade my VB6 student license, but I would need to transition everything over to Visual Studio as soon as possible. I also had my demo scheduled.
The big day to demo my base automation project arrived. The company tried to insinuate that it belonged to them anyhow since I was able to create it on company time. I told them I considered it proprietary since I had purchased the software to create it, since I could have chosen to watch TV with the other crewmembers while on duty or sleep instead of work on the project, and since I spent a majority of my off time working on the project. They had no argument against that logic. Then I showed it to them. I think the in-house programmer liked it, but the other managers and decision makers expressed no interest in acquiring it. A purchase price was never discussed or brought up.
It takes a ready, willing, and able buyer to make a deal. I had an able buyer, but the other two parts were obviously missing. I don’t really know the reasons why. I only have my own conjecture and speculation which begets another story.
I have primarily made my adult living as a helicopter pilot with a brief excursion into civil engineering and surveying. Flying helicopters is what I know best and most capable of doing. Working for a civil engineering and surveying firm I quickly learned what a “perc test” was. A perc test requires three two foot deep post holes to be dug on the property to be tested so water can be poured into the holes and the amount of time it takes the water to filter out of the hole can be determined. This test determines whether or not the property can handle a septic system. On my first perc test I also got acquainted with a “rock bar” for the first time. In North Central Arkansas rock bars are mandatory for successfully digging a post hole. In South Louisiana all you need is a good post hole digger. I managed to punch my first hole with great effort. Half way through my second hole I looked at the man I was working with and said, “Civil engineers have been doing perc tests all these years that you would have thought they could have come up with an easier way to dig these holes.” The man looked at me real indignantly and said, “They have! They are back in the office sitting under the air conditioning while they have us out here digging.” So that’s how it works; someone else’s misery or “unnecessary” effort doesn’t matter as long as it doesn’t affect the decision makers. The company’s managers and decision makers that I had demoed all my hard work to could care less if it made life easier for the grunts out in the trenches. They are on the payroll clock anyhow, so let them do it the hard way. They say if you are going to create something, create something the people want. I created something the people that used it wanted, but the people that would have to pay for it could care less. I guess that was a hard lesson learned. I should have been selfish and worked on ProximityCast first instead of having compassion for my coworkers.
The failure to make a deal was a pretty hard blow to my computer science efforts. ProximityCast is a huge project for a single person to take on. It could use a development team. My college buddy wasn’t available, but if my base automation project had been successful then perhaps I could start my own little software shop to get started on ProximityCast. I also needed to decide on a technology to build ProximityCast with. I had always been a Microsoft fan in spite of the large outcry against them. Bill Gates touted Visual Studio as the latest and greatest and quickest thing to getting your project up and running as fast as possible that I decided to use Dot Net to create ProximityCast. I had to go through the initial learning curve that any new technology requires. What a nightmare Visual Studio Dot Net proved to be for me! I had never had such difficulty with anything in all my life.
I love a good computer science reference book, but regardless of the books I got on Dot Net I bumped into difficult problems that were platform related when I tried to get code to work. After wrestling with some of these problems all day I was pretty wore out. To make things worse, Microsoft charged for their technical support. Although I had earned a computer science degree and attempting to do what I feel were worthwhile things, I am probably more of a hobby programmer than a professional programmer. If I had a huge infrastructure of in-house tech support like large corporations can afford, maybe Dot Net could have proved useful and worth the effort and expense. Newer versions may be better than the version I had purchased, but I have neither the budget nor the time to find out. Dot Net really burnt me on Microsoft products and caused me to join the ranks of the other detractors. As a helicopter pilot I know how to preflight an aircraft to determine if I should take it flying, but I have no desire to ever have too assemble an engine just so I can do some flying. As a programmer I know how to get most technologies up and running so I can write a little code, but with Dot Not it was like having to build an engine every time I wanted to write a little code.
If you plant an ornamental tree in your yard and never water or fertilize it, the tree will shrivel up and die. Well with my failure to make a deal to support my base automation project, and my failure to successfully transition to Dot Not, my programmy aspirations had pretty much shriveled up and died. I set all my programming projects on the shelf and forgot about them. I could have picked another technology and tried again, but I was burnt out and I had an enjoyable job that paid the bills.
As an avid mountain biker I felt healthy and felt I would be able to fly till I was seventy. Then along came some funny little episodes that turned everything on its head. A partial seizure disorder that came from out of the blue took away my authorization to fly and my authorization to drive. This caused a concerted to find something I could do at home. The thing I mostly found were people selling you how to sell people on how to make money online. No real product with value. This caused Dreams Dead and Gone to be Reborn.
I have made a lot of progress on my prototype for ProximityCast.com using open source software primarily PHP and MySQL. I should have chosen this in the beginning and never fooled with Microsoft or the Base Automation Project. The creation of ProximityCast.com is proving to be successful and educational. Whether or not it will ever be successful as a money making enterprise is questionable. Right now it is simply a “BIG” hobby. That may be all it ever amounts to, but at least I’m enjoying the process and I like ProximityCast even if the world doesn’t.
When I first got grounded I felt my biggest handicap was no longer being allowed to fly and upon discharge from the hospital no longer being allowed to drive. I’ve not had one of my little episodes since 25 February 2008. If I can go a whole year I will be allowed to drive again. I will probably never be allowed to fly again. I can be happy programming something I think is worthwhile; however I have noticed a change that wasn’t there before. I have foggy days where I am not able to focus like I need to for writing good code. Sometimes drinking a Red Bull helps me break through this fog, but there are plenty of times where even that does no good. It is questionable whether or not an employer would tolerate that if I was able to get to a job. It doesn’t matter how much I want to code, if my head is foggy it’s just not happening. Fortunately I have clear days where I am quite satisfied with what I get done. I thought ProximityCast was a sure shot, but now I don’t know if it will every amount to anything. There is only so much one person can do. ProximityCast is a little more complicated than the average mindless web page. Most people who look at the site never venture below the surface to explore all the real gems are contained, and there are always improvements that could and should be implemented. “By the yard life is hard, but by the inch it’s a cinch.” Maybe someday it will be used and appreciated. If not, eventually we all cease from our labors. How nice to leave something the world could find useful and appreciated.
Post note: We ourselves are often not a good judge of our performance. I remember a particular IERW student when I was teaching tactics for the Army. On their student solo day they were required to navigate to a serious of landing zones. This student didn’t make a single landing zone, but thought he had done a good job simply because he made it make to the home field. So maybe I’m fooling myself. I personally thought & think ProximityCast is a great application, but if it never gets any traction with fans, users, and contributors I guess I’m sadly misinformed. Oh well, c'est la vie.
The End
