[Ground-station] Wally Ritchie WU1Y - SK

[Robert McGwier]

This is a great loss. RIP Wally. You will be missed.

Bob


On Sat, Jul 10, 2021, 1:35 PM Michelle Thompson via Ground-Station
<ground-station at lists.openresearch.institute> wrote:

> Wally Ritchie WU1Y - SK
>
> It's never easy to share bad news about a significant loss.
>
> Wally Ritchie WU1Y passed away in Florida on 1 July 2021 from heart
> failure.
>
> We have lost a big part of our team. I, and I know many of you, join his
> friends and family in mourning his passing.
>
> While he defeated cancer with the same energy and style that he overcame
> so many other daunting challenges in his life, he was unable to recover
> from a series of setbacks that began in late May and worsened in late June.
>
> Wally was our Primary Investigator for the Phase 4 transponder project, is
> a primary contributor to the documentation, design, fundraising, and grant
> process for the transponder, and was responsible for the specification and
> vision of Remote Labs. He defended, mentored, and supported the team and
> Open Research Institute work on numerous occasions. He was a true subject
> matter expert in space and terrestrial digital communications, was an
> experienced manager, and a talented entrepreneur. He lived and traveled
> internationally, was well read, and never failed to provide real backbone
> exactly when and where it was needed.
>
> Professionally, Wally was a Principal Engineer. He had extensive
> experience in systems engineering and firmware development. He was an
> expert in Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA). He held several high-level
> manufacturing and management positions during his career, and knew digital
> signal processing in depth. He was devoted to education and improving
> student accessibility to high technology.
>
> I met Wally through Jonathan Brandenburg at the 2016 TAPR DCC. We hit it
> off instantly. We had a lot in common. Wally had repeatedly attempted to
> volunteer through AMSAT and had not gotten a positive response. He was
> thrilled to find out that people were working on the problems that he
> thought were important for amateur satellites, and he dug in and selflessly
> volunteered from that day forward. Our collaboration extended to open
> source medical devices, regulatory work, a variety of grant applications,
> and some attempts at some really fun proprietary ventures. I met his wife
> Debbie and his son Keegan.
>
> He did presentations, volunteered at the HamCation booth, and organized
> several workshops. He led design reviews and wrote papers whenever they
> were needed. He did whatever I asked and always let me know when I was
> doing a good job, or where I could improve.
>
> I learned so much from him and will miss him very much.
>
> While it's not possible to "replace" someone like Wally, we will keep
> going with the same spirit. He had great confidence in our ability to
> achieve our goals. I'm not inclined to let him down.
>
> -Michelle W5NYV
>
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