About the Author

Glenn Bever is an engineer who spent his entire 42-year career working at the NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center in California. For much of that time he designed and built electronic systems, then supported flight testing using them on research aircraft. Shortly after the end of the Cold War he was assigned to work with Russians in Moscow and Zhukovsky Air Base to resurrect the Tu-144 supersonic passenger plane and collect flight data for the NASA High Speed Research Program. Glenn spent much of his time in Russia representing the United States as instrumentation and on-site engineer for the program.

Glenn is a retired Deputy Director for Research and Engineering at the NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center, where he also previously served as Chief of the Flight Instrumentation and Flight Systems branches. He was project Chief Engineer for the F-18 Automated Aerial Refueling and the C-17 research flight computing system projects.  For much of his career there he developed embedded systems for research aircraft ranging from an Army OV-1 propeller aircraft and a KC-135 tanker to supersonic fighters such as F-104 Starfighter, F-18 Hornet, and F-15 Eagle as well as SR-71 and Tu-144LL supersonic high altitude aircraft.

For 16 years Glenn also served as the NASA representative to the NATO Advisory Group for Aerospace Research and Development (AGARD) Flight Test Techniques Group responsible for publications about flight test techniques and flight test instrumentation.  Glenn was principally responsible for the publication process of the AGARDographs and authored one himself: “Digital Signal Conditioning for Flight Test.”

For his work, NASA has awarded Glenn with its Exceptional Engineering Achievement medal, Outstanding Leadership medal, and Exceptional Service medal.

Glenn also is a licensed pilot, certified SCUBA diver, and Ham radio operator (WD6ASL).

Although retired, Glenn still keeps his hand in as Armstrong’s first Emeritus engineer.