“The Genesis of GVF Training” Ralph Brooker

In celebration of GVF’s Silver Anniversary, in this issue we feature the reflections of another industry executive associated with the Association’s 25 years: Ralph Brooker, President, SatProf Inc.

The Mutual Recognition Arrangement (MRA) was one of the GVF’s very first volunteer working groups, formed to reduce both interference and the cost of type approving antennas. In 1999 I volunteered to lead that group – unaware of the Dave Hartshorn whirlwind I had leaped into! It was such a privilege to work with dozens of excellent colleagues from across the industry and around the world to hammer out the first of many MRA standards.

In 2005, having tired of the engineering consulting life, the late Pete Zilliox and I proposed a radical idea: we could scale up the nascent GVF Training programme by providing realistic, online, interactive simulations of key skills such as antenna pointing. The GVF Board agreed, but having quickly realised that GVF needed a training and certification administration infrastructure too, SatProf proposed to manage the complete programme on behalf of GVF. That lead to a symbiotic relationship that is still going strong after 16 years, 30+ courses, and more than 20,000 students served. Read more about the MRA and GVF Training.

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Ralph Brooker, President, SatProf Inc.

Ralph Brooker is co-founder and President of SatProf, Inc., a provider of innovative technical training to the satellite communications industry. Prior to founding SatProf, he developed microwave electronics and satellite networks and systems at Comsat Labs and Andrew Corporation. He has five patents, numerous published papers, and received an M.S.E.E. degree from the University of Illinois in 1981.