Lloyd,
That was a very interesting read. I still have one of those early Trace 2012 inverters. A friend who lives off the grid has the 7th one produced. Before
buying my
inverter I worked for ESS Corp, and Bob Carver designed one of our 500 watt audio amps. Small world, as Pete Warbeck also designed a 500 watt amp for us and then went on to start his own company Linear
Power in Auburn,
California, making the first high wattage mobile audio amps. Pete is a pilot like me, and just as his company was taking off, he died crashing I think an old Piper Cub he had rebuilt. All those names in that article brought back 30 year old memories.
One person I've
lost touch with and really want to find from those days is Mike
Thompson. He was chief
engineer for ESS, I was his lab tech, and he designed many speaker systems for ESS, Cannon, and Dynaco when we bought them. He designed an excellent sub woofer before anyone else. He, like Pete and I was starting to fly hang gliders in the late 70's early 80's and he crashed my Seagull. He was in the hospital for a couple of months, his elderly parents didn't drive and lived about 100 miles away. Every weekend I would drive to Napa to pick up his parents so they could visit him in the hospital. ESS in mid 70's went bankrupt, Mike took a job with Marantz in Southern
California and I haven't heard from him in 30 years. If you or anyone has any connections in this industry, I sure would be grateful for leads to find Mike
Thompson. Another acoustic
engineer from ESS that worked with Mike is Tim Johnson, last I heard he was working in Stockton for a intercom company. Mike would be in his mid 60's today and might be retired.