Steve Reed, Engineer, Hughes

Although a talented and outstanding engineer from a young age, Steve Reed is a modest fellow. Steve was still a college student when he applied for his first aeronautical job at Hughes Training, Inc. The old Hughes Training site was located in Arlington, TX, right across the street from Six Flags. There used to be a bar located on the 3rd floor before it was Hughes, when it was a British simulator company, but sadly, all that remained of the bar were the memories by the time the college kid got there. At the tender age of 19, Steve was offered a full-time job as a simulation engineer building terrain graphics for F16, F18, CH47, CH53, and the LCAC hovercraft. Steve was most proud of co-developing a novel method of generating simulation imagery that could be used to speed up the creation of full simulation graphics. He used to travel to Reston/Chantilly regularly to test the graphics on the simulators. Along the way, Steve met friends from foreign military services who had fun trying to out-best the Texan on spicy foods. There were good people, and these were good times. Hughes Training turned out to be a memorable place for a guy to make a start on a happy and distinguished career in engineering