Background
Kevin grew up wanting to fly. He took his first lesson at 13 and soloed at 17. Engineering school at RPI and graduate work at the University of Illinois followed, which proved to be the foundation for everything that came after. He earned his private certificate in 2001 and has been building hours ever since.
His engineering career started in compiler development at Hewlett-Packard, working on the Itanium IA-64 compiler and earning two patents in code optimization. From there he moved into embedded networking, spending eight years at Cavium, Inc. as Senior Applications Architect developing software for Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent, and Juniper Networks. He joined BendixKing by Honeywell as Director of Software Engineering and Chief Software Architect, where he built a DO-178C software development process from the ground up for next-generation general aviation avionics. He has been an FAA Consultant Software DER since 2018.
Aviation was the constant running alongside all of it. In 2010 he bought a 1981 A36 Bonanza already equipped with a Tornado Alley turbonormalizer, which made it a capable cross-country airplane and opened up the flight levels. He earned his CFI in 2016 and founded KTronics Aero Services that same year, with the CFII and MEI following shortly after. He has logged over 3,700 hours across more than 40 aircraft types, including 200 hours of formation flying as both lead and wing.
Kevin is an ABS-recognized Bonanza instructor with over 900 hours of Bonanza-specific instruction. He has produced webinars for the American Bonanza Society, written for ABS Magazine, and presented at the ABS Convention and the ABS Flight Instructor Crosstalk. He puts a lot of emphasis on understanding why things work the way they do, not just how to execute them. He is based at Lago Vista Airport (KRYW) on Lake Travis, northwest of Austin, TX.
Outside of flying, Kevin volunteers as a mission pilot for the Veterans Airlift Command, providing free air transportation for post-9/11 combat wounded veterans and their families. He spent five years as Scoutmaster for Troop 202 in Cedar Park, TX.