One of the more fun speaking gigs with BEHEMOTH was this one… presentations at the two AeroVironment sites (Monrovia and Simi Valley). I already knew the founder, Paul MacCready, through our shared interest in Human Powered Vehicles, and I remember being enchanted by his geek playground. They gave me one of their new Charger electric bicycles as an honorarium, and that served me well on Camano Island for years.

Although I don’t have a video of my own talk, I had so much fun hanging out with the Pathfinder and Helios aircraft team that they gave me a VHS tape of a December 10, 1997 presentation about their solar altitude record. This beautiful video shows Ray Morgan narrating footage of the record-breaking solar-powered Pathfinder flight in July of that year, reaching an elevation of 13.5 miles over the Hawaiian Islands. The event was the dedication to Colonel Ellison Onizuka, and the video is pure geek delight. (Posted on YouTube in 2021 with the permission of AeroVironment.)