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About the Raven |
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| How Raven Came To Be
As a small child growing up in the Florida swamps the only a couple of things that could get my attention away from the alligators and snakes. The "Voodoo" jets flying high overhead with their noisy engines and bright white contrails always caught my attention. And then there were the rocket launches just twenty miles to the east at Cape Canaveral. I grew up watching the early rockets as they lifted up into the sky and beyond. I saw the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo launches by just looking out my front window. I have to say that I was deeply affected by the pride and determination displayed by our space program in those days. How, in the face of repeated failures and setbacks, the doggedness and persistence of our scientists carried our country into the space age. It was in those times that, to me, the unknown became something to seek out and explore, and not something to avoid. The unknown was a friend, not an enemy. That feeling followed me through a not so stellar academic career. I struggled with my learning but I kept with it. I knew that without a sound engineering background, success would be difficult, if not impossible. Yet all during those years I continued my drawing and imagining, waiting for the time that I would be able to do something big. I mean something really big. So I got my degree, moved from Florida on over to the Pacific Northwest, and started working for the Boeing Company. One day at Boeing, I sat in on a noon time lecture. Wayne Bliesener was giving a talk about his Man-Eagle HPAs. I was hooked. So for the next 10 years, Wayne and I built his HPAs. We did an incredible amount of basic research and experimentation. We learned what worked and what didn't work. I got a real appreciation of the hard work what goes on behind progress. How progress is measured is such tiny steps. All the while I was working on Bliesner's airplane, I was thinking over a design I had in the back of my head. Over the years that early design evolved into the RAVEN and when the time came to build it, the RAVEN Project was started. The RAVEN Project represents all those things I admired about science as a kid. The pushing of technology one step beyond it's limits. The solving of the unsolvable problem, doing something that has never been done before. All the stuff I thought about as I watched the rockets through my window as a boy. And doing all that with a really cool airplane. I hope you enjoy browsing through the RAVEN Project website. You'll be able to appreciate the years of effort that have gone into this bird. Paul Illian
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