Several years ago, the US Air Force put out a call to inventors to find a way to mitigate the effects of volcanic ash on turbine engines. In 2012, Polartronix was awarded an SBIR Phase 1 contract to design a sensor system. Plans included the use of an unmanned drone to fly into an ash cloud, collect and analyze samples, and to radio the information back to observers on the ground. In 2014, ARTIC LLC was awarded the phase 2 SBIR contract, with Polartronix doing much of the sensor design. Currently Polartronix is constructing a prototype sensor that will fly on board a UAV later this year.

Poker Flat Research Range is a NASA sounding rocket facility located 30 miles north of Fairbanks, Alaska. The rockets are launched into the aurora and make measurements to better our understanding of plasma physics. In 2011, I was asked to look at a microwave communications link that existed between Poker Flat and Fort Yukon, Alaska. This led to many other projects on range, including: Fiber Optics upgrades, Network and WiFi upgrades and several smaller projects involving the deployment of scientific sensors.