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Wall of Honor Level:
Air and Space Sponsor

Honored by:

Felix served the Aviation and Aerospace Domains for the extent of his professional career. Over those 32 years Mr. Pitts dedicated his time and energies to the safety and security of the industry while at the NASA Langley Research Center. His responsibilities ranged in his early years to solving challenges within the disciplines of instrumentation research and development while working on such platforms as the F-15 to working with industry as a Systems Chief for Experimental Flight Systems.
Never a challenge too difficult or a problem too daunting, Felix advanced his career as a Research Group Leader where he and a handful of colleagues accepted the test of making our aviation and aerospace platforms more resilient to the effects of lightning. His work addressed the evolution of avionics and aircraft materials the threat of electric discharges upon those systems.
Felix's career was filled with accolades and awards such as the NASA Exceptional Engineering Achievement Medal-1989 and the NASA HJE Reid Award-1991. However the apogee of his career was when Felix and his wife Barbara were invited to Athens, Greece to receive the Admiral Louis de Florez Flight Safety Foundation Award-1989. The citation stated: "for his personal efforts in originating measurement and data analysis techniques which provide significant practical answers to the question of how modern aircraft electronic systems will be affected by nearby or direct lightning strikes. These techniques are routinely used in the design of present day aircraft systems."