Kenneth G. Wernicke is a lucky man— a man whose career has allowed him to pursue his passion for aerodynamics. He's a tall, lean man with flyaway, receding brown hair that blends into bushy, grey sideburns extending to his jawbone. With his penetrating gaze and intense voice, he could easily play a stereotypical eccentric inventor in the movies — like the Doc Brown character in the Back to the Future movies. As a matter of fact, I kept wondering when, like Doc Brown explaining time travel to the relativity-challenged, he would say, "Walt, you're just not thinking fourth-dimensionally."

But Ken Wernicke is no shade tree aerodynamicist or wild-eyed eccentric. When he accepted early retirement from Bell Helicopter Textron in 1990 after 35 years, he was known as "Mr. Tiltrotor"— the lead design engineer for both the XV-15 and Bell's portion of the V-22. He first delved into the black art of aerodynamics at the age of six in Kansas City, Missouri, by building model aircraft. He earned his B.S. and M.S. in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Kansas and was hired by Bell Helicopter. His first major assignment was design engineer for the HX-40, the prototype for the ubiquitous UH-1 Huey helicopter that became the mainstay of our "fling-wing" forces in Vietnam. Although not a licensed pilot, Wernicke did solo in a glider and has accumulated some stick time in helicopters and the V-22.

The 62-year-old Wernicke never planned a leisurely retirement but, instead, formed his own company—Sky Technology Vehicle Design and Development, based in Hurst, Texas (a suburb of Fort Worth). Throughout his career at Bell, he'd always trusted more in his intuition, knowledge, and slide rule than in the computerized design tools that came to dominate engineering during his tenure at Bell. He has carried this faith into his work at Sky Tech, only recently putting aside his trusty slide rule for a handheld calculator for the more cumbersome mathematical operations.