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.
Lance Holly
Managing Partner
Avionics and Flight Control Systems
Cirriculum Vitae
Lance is an aerospace engineer specializing in UAV avionics and automatic flight controls who has co-developed, integrated and flight tested fully automatic systems on many variations of fixed-wing and helicopter UAVs including Wolverine, Electric Wolverine, Aggressor II, Yamaha RMAX, YAK 54 UAV trainer, and other programs. Lance received his Master’s Degree with Honors at the University of Kansas Department of Aerospace Engineering. His focus in graduate school was UAV systems, flight dynamics and control, UAV and RPV flight test, UAV flight test procedures, inertial measurement, and flight data recording and dynamics analysis of small-scale aircraft. He is also a small UAV and R/C test pilot who holds certification for Yamaha RMAX helicopter operation and piloting.
William Donovan
Managing Partner
UAV Design and Flight Dynamics
Cirriculum Vitae
Bill Donovan received his M.S. from the University of Kansas in aerospace engineering. During his time at KU he worked as a research assistant in the KU Flight Test Laboratory, was a lab assistant for the Department of Aerospace Engineering at KU, and was a summer intern at the Boeing Co. in Wichita where he worked in structural design for the 737 program. While attending graduate school Bill has worked as a graduate research assistant focusing on the conceptual and detailed design of the Meridian unmanned aircraft system. In addition he worked for Dynamic Analysis, an engineering firm specializing in structural dynamics. Bill is an expert in aircraft conceptual, preliminary, and detailed design, stability and control, and structural dynamics.