Our Company
Jay Ferrell
President
Cirriculum Vitae
Jay Ferrell is President of Viking Aerospace, LLC. After retiring in 2002 from the Lockheed MartinSkunk Works, he worked as a consultant for Rocketplane LLC. At Lockheed Martin he was the U-2 Reconnaissance Airplane Project Engineer responsible for the Autopilot and Air Data System (APADS), the Actuator Development and Replacement Program (ADARP), and the Angle of Attack (AOA)/Stall Warning System Program. All of these systems required definition, specification, interface, design development, ground and flight test plan development, aircraft ground and flight testing support for certification to Air Force requirements Previously, Mr. Ferrell was the Tier III/DarkStar Unmanned Airplane Project Engineer responsible for automatic landing gear control, nose wheel steering, braking, and oversight of Boeing’s development of Automatic Flight Controls/Actuators. All of these systems required definition, specification, interface, design development, ground and flight test plan development, aircraft ground and flight testing support for certification to DARPA and later to Air Force requirements. For the Advanced Tactical Fighter YF-22 prototype competition, Mr. Ferrell was the R & D Engineer acting as group engineer for Vehicle Management Systems (VMS), and for Integrated Vehicle Subsystem Control (IVSC). In the Unmanned Airplane Branch, he was R & D Engineer in a research program involving the development and testing of GPS and integrating both medium and low cost/accuracy Inertial Navigation Systems (INS) with the GPS. Mr Ferrell was a L-1011 Design Specialist and Lead Systems Engineer for both the Digital and Analog Automatic Flight Control System (AFCS), and FAA Designated Engineering Representative (DER). At Boeing he was a Design Engineer for the 727 and 737 autopilot, automatic landing system, yaw SAS, and autothrottle.
Dr. Richard Colgren
Vice President
Chief Scientist
Cirriculum Vitae
Dr. Richard Colgren is Vice President of Viking Aerospace and is an Associate Professor of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Kansas. His research is on UAV development and flight vehicle conceptual design and flight testing. Previously he was a Senior Staff Engineer at the Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company in Palmdale, California. There he was Lead Engineer for C4ISR and UAV programs for Air Vehicle Sciences and Systems. Previous work includes feasibility studies and preliminary/advanced design for flight control system concepts such as the F-117A, U-2/TR-1/ER-2, F-22, SR-71, CRV and HL-20 mini-shuttles, A-X proposal, B-2, F-20, and other programs. Work on UAV (Uninhabited Air Vehicle) projects includes Lockheed Martin's Tier II+, DarkStar (Tier III-), X-33, UCAV, micro-UAVs, the Wraith RPV (Remotely Piloted Vehicle) and other projects. At Northrop he designed flight control laws for the B-2 and the F-20, and developed handling qualities prediction methods. He is internationally recognized for his over 70 publications and 2 patents.