Team TREK president Robert Bulaga was exposed to aviation as a child growing up in an Air Force family. So, it seems only natural that he chose a career and spent more than 45 years in the aerospace industry.
But it was watching an older brother become seriously ill and having his entire family med-evaced from Guam to Hawaii for his care that “left a lifelong impression on me.” Indeed, his vivid recollection of that time – as well as recently seeing a good friend involved in a severe accident that required immediate access to emergency response – that spurred his interest and participation in the GoAERO Prize competition.
“It really hit close to home,” Rob recalls. “He needed an emergency response vehicle to get him out of the accident. But I quickly realized it’s not easy for everyone to have such access…I’ve been in the industry long enough that I’ve had numerous friends and colleagues involved in aircraft crashes. I’ve even participated in some search and rescue missions. I know how hard it is to spot a crash site and then to get to it.”
So besides meeting the GoAERO goals, Rob hopes that Team TREK’s vehicle will “push boundaries on procurement and operational expenses, and reliability. I’d like to see a follow-on concept used in small jurisdictions and Third World countries. Remote areas and devastated urban environments for med-evacs would be my primary targets.”
In fact, Rob, a self-described “dreamer who believes we can do and accomplish anything,” stresses that the GoAERO Prize, like the GoFly Prize before it – Team TREK participated in that first iteration of the global competition – offers a venue to design, build, and fly unconventional solutions to real-world problems. I live for that!”
This far-reaching vision and profound sense of humanitarianism comes as no surprise to anyone who knows Rob. He is a recent cancer survivor, his mom was a nurse, and his sister is a doctor, so “I’ve always known and appreciated to power of medicine and the commitment and compassion of those in the medical fields.”
At the same time, he has, since childhood, also known and appreciated the power and promise of flight. In elementary school, he would modify paper airplanes to get better performance out of them. This sometimes got him into trouble, he relates, since his designs could hit the blackboard from the back of the room, “much to the chagrin of my teachers.”
In high school, Rob was a long-distance runner, which he notes can get boring, so he’d mentally design aircraft while competing in a race. Then at the University of Illinois, from which he received both his B.S. and M.S. degrees in aeronautical and astronautical engineering, one of his professors and mentors, H. S. Stillwell, “extended a lot of leeway to my attendance and study methods, and thoroughly encouraged my out-of-the-box thinking.”
That type of thinking served as a solid foundation for Rob’s distinguished 45 years in the aerospace industry, where he is a NASA-acknowledged expert in propeller analysis and design, with a diversified background that includes CFD analysis, performance, stability, and control analysis, structural and mechanical design, systems engineering, FAR 23 type certification, component testing, flight testing, and aircraft accident investigations.
A pilot with more than 1500 flight hours, Rob has worked on aviation ground support equipment, space-based experiments, racing cars, front-line Air Force fighters, advanced spacecraft, high-performance general aviation aircraft, and numerous eVTOL aircraft. Of particular note and acclaim, he was chief engineer and primary test pilot on the DARPA-funded SoloTrek XFV. And as his former Team TREK partner Jose Fierro once exclaimed, “Rob knows more about ducted propellors than anyone in the world.”
“Anyone that uses ducted propellers eventually comes to us,” Rob says, noting that one of the team’s earlier aircraft was featured in the film Agent Cody Banks. TREK has also consulted and partnered with large and small companies alike, working on dozens of ducted propeller projects.
Will all that experience give Team TREK an edge in GoAERO? Rob says, humbly, that he still has much to learn. That’s why he regularly watches the GoAERO webinars, which really help to reinforce the directions he’s taking. Moreover, they are helping him address his biggest challenge – autonomy.
“The final flight home and auto-land are simple enough,” Rob explains, “but maneuvering through adverse conditions and terrain will be difficult. So, we’ll be reaching out to other experts to help us with this.”
One of those experts is sure to be Ed Gillespie, former chief test pilot at North American Aviation. Although well into his 80s, Ed was always at the forefront of aviation innovation. He and Prof. Stillwell have “given me the fortitude to pursue my unconventional dreams.”
His wife of almost 50 years is also a great source of encouragement. According to Rob, she’s used to him out in the garage working on projects, from racing bikes to bobsleds.
And when he’s not working on these projects and on his TREK flyer, he’s still immersed in the industry. “I identify with the films, The Great Waldo Pepper and Those Magnificent Men and Their Flying Machines, he says. “You can have fun while advancing aviation science.
コメント