Plane Crazy Saturday speaker Bill Guoan

About the Author

Mr. William H. Guoan, is a retired US Air Force officer having served his country for 25 years active duty. Upon retirement from the US Air Force, Mr. Guoan joined Northrop Grumman Corporation as a Flight Test Engineer. His engineering assignments involved working with the design teams to design and develop flight test instrumentation systems for the B-2A Advance Technology Bomber. As a result of his flight test experience in the USAF, Mr. Guoan was reassigned as a Mission Test Director/Flight Crew assigned to a specially configured US Air Force NKC-135A, Avionics Flying Test Bed. He accrued over 600 hours of flight time testing and evaluating the B-2's radar and navigational systems. He retired from Northrop after 20 years of dedicated service to the company. Following his retirement from Northrop, Mr. Guoan joined the Lockheed Martin team as Communications Navigation Engineer assigned to the F/A-22 Combined Test Force (CTF). His assignments involved flight testing the F/A-22's advanced radar/navigation avionics systems. Mr. Guoan worked for Lockheed Martin until his final retirement in 2006. Mr. Guoan holds a post graduate degree in Aerospace Engineering, and is an Associate Fellow in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), a Senior Member in the Society of Aerospace Engineers (SAE), and a Senior Member in the Society of Flight Test Engineers (SFTE).

Mr. Guoan has authored two books, "Pathway to the Stars" and "Little Boys with Big Ideas" both of which were written for college level students interested in becoming aeronautical and aircraft design engineers. The purpose of these two textbooks is to familiarize potential engineering students with the basics of flight dynamics behind the design air vehicle configurations, wind tunnel testing leading to full scale development of a flight test article. Many of his models to aerospace development are currently on display at the USAF Test Pilot School, Edwards AFB, California, a must see experience for aviation minded folks.