I am a physicist by education, aerospace engineer by career, and an astonomer at heart. I joined the AAVSO initially in 1968, when I was 12 years old. I submitted
about 300 observations using an 8-inch Newtownian Reflector (Critereon) for a few years, and then life got in the way. I joined again in the early 80s for the second time, and now, nearing retierment, have joined for the third time and attended the 113th annual meeting in Huntsville. My program, the Space Launch System (SLS) is run out the the Marshal Space Flight Center in Huntsville, so that was an easy decision to go to this meeting, my first one ever. I now have a 4 inch f/10 and 6 inch f/4 home-built newtonians (from the 60s), an 8-inch Super Polaris C-8 (SPC8) from the 80s, and a 10-inch Meade Cass. I also have 5 pairs of binoculars (7x50, 9x63, 11x80, 15x75 and 25x100) that I use for most of my AAVSO work, all visual as I don’t know how to do all the electronic stuff that everyone seems to be doing now. I have always done only visual observing.