JUNE EVENT: June 17,2010 Tin Caps game, All you can Eat, Thirsty Thursday, and FIRE Works. The Tin Caps have a group outing area at the Appleseed Picnic Pavilion where you get a ticket to the game, all you can eat food (hot dogs, hamburgers, pulled pork, chicken, sides) and soft drinks for $20/adult and $15/child. This will be the clubs June event and will replace the normal June Golf Outing - the board felt this would be a great alternative. We have reserved Thursday June 17th with game starting at 7:05 pm. This night is also a fireworks night. We believe with the game, meal and fireworks that this will be a great evening for you and your engineering friends or family or outside engineer friendly friends. The Appleseed Picnic Pavilion is a neat place to eat and visit with plenty of nearby seats for the game.
MAY EVENT: May 20, 2010: Science Central. FWEC was invited by Martin Fisher to attend a presentation at Science Central, that included the nearly complete GE generation exhibit and efforts to acquire a new fascination exhibit called Science on a Sphere.
April 29, 2010 TOUR: Canlan Ice Sports
Ice Arena off
http://www.icesports.com/fortwayne/default.aspx, http://www.icesports.com/fortwayne/about-us.aspx
March 25, 2010 TOUR: WOWO Transmitter
Tour was held with 40 attendees who toured the old and new technology in broadcasting transmitters at WOWO. The tour was at the transmitter site off of HWY 24 West (identified by a tall antenna) where the group saw the famous 100,000 watt transmitter which is now dormant and the new replacement digital equipment. Jack Didier and Mogan David were our tour guides. The group was also able to view some significant past radio history of the exciter for the almost implemented stereo AM system patented by our local engineer, Bob Streeter. See more at WOWO website. http://historyofwowo.com/tech.html
March 4, 2010 TOUR 2: Norfolk & Southern’s Lake Division Dispatch Center. There were 15 attendees. This Lake Division is NS's second largest division out of its eleven and this high tech dispatch center, renovated early 2009 is in the former Nickel Plate open air steam engine round house. All
FEBUARY EVENT: National Engineers Week is February 14-20.
The Awards Banquet on the 20th is at Indiana Tech/ Andorfer Commons.
The American Society of Civil Engineers is the lead organization for E-Week and Rick Slayback is the Chairman. Jake Dinius heads up the Achievement Awards, Jim Delaney is taking nominations for Citizen Engineer, Pat Delaney handles public relations, April Bledsoe is responsible for banquet arrangements, Amy Delaney is the Treasurer, and a variety of other FWEC participants will be making the week a success....and it was.
The Engineers Week’s activities included presentations of engineering to the public and reminders of the importance of engineering in daily living. FWEC provided presenters for the FWEC award and Weitzman sponsored awards – 22 awards were presented in all at the banquet. E-week web site www.indiana-eweek.org The banquet’s keynote speaker was Bill Sinish who’s father Don was the 1998 Citizen Engineer. Bill spoke about his company, Nature's Fuel and their project for converting Waste to Energy. The main focus of the presentation was about their current project with the city of
FEBUARY 18, 2010 TOUR: Indiana Tech
Andorfer building, room 207, 7 PM
A presentation will be given by Viridian Architecture, Terry Thornsbury, Primary Engineering, Mike Lubbehusen, and Builder, Michael Kinder and Sons (MKS) with Bill or Doug Kinder. We are hopeful the presentation will be able to be followed by a tour of the renovation of the Seitz’s Center built in 1857 (to be renamed
JANUARY 21, 2010 TOUR: Norfolk & Southern’s Lake Division Dispatch Center
7315 Nelson Rd, Fort Wayne @7PM
There were 16 attendees. Our tour guide was Train Master, Bruce Carpenter who was most informative and helpful and answered many questions. The Lake Division is NS's second largest division out of its eleven. We will be touring the dispatch center which was renovated in late 2008/early 2009. The Lake Division dispatch center is a former nickle plate open air round house for steam engines. There is currently glass block and brick covering the area where the former steam engine tracks were; these tracks merged on the east side of the building at a locomotive turn table for the 1 way steam engines. In the 1970's the Chicago and Fostoria dispatchers worked from little rooms in this building, they would have a single desk and run the operation using switches and a single phone. After the multimillion dollar renovation all lake division dispatchers work from here and this building
now employs approximately 50 people.
DECEMBER 17, 2009 TOUR: Mad Anthony’s Original Brewing Co.
Location: 2002 Broadway, Fort Wayne, IN
Tours will be run in groups of approximately 30 and will commence at 5:30pm, with successive tours at 6:00pm and 6:30pm. Please request a specific tour time when you RSVP. With limited space per group, we can’t guarantee you’ll get your requested starting time, so register early, or drink while you wait. Mad Anthony’s has capacity for up to 125 attendees. Mr. Blaine Stucky, Brew Master, will conduct tours and provide tasting samples; however, you’ll have to purchase your pints once you’ve identified which brew you like. You’re also responsible for meals and/or appetizer costs. Menu details available online at: http://www.madbrew.com The Fort Wayne Engineers’ Club has also extended an invitation to the American Society for Quality, Northeast Indiana, Section 0905. There will be an opportunity to enjoy great food and drink during this FWEC event, so please register early as this will be a ‘FIRST COME, FIRST SERVED’ occasion!
NOVEMBER 18, 2009 TOUR: Fort Wayne Metals
9609 Ardmore Ave., Fort Wayne, IN. Dinner 6 PM, tour 6:45 PM
The FWEC enjoyed a joint tour of the Fort Wayne Metals facility w/ ASM & SAE which included dinner at 6 PM and tour 6:45. Fort Wayne Metals was a very gracious host and one of the industry leaders in medical wire making. More info on www.fwmetals.com. “The Leader in Medical Wire.” Fort Wayne Metals wire ends up in medical devices saving lives. They grew from a small wire mill in 1970 to the market leader for custom-drawn precision fine wire for medical and surgical products in the US and provide round or flat wire of any shape, strands or composites like DFT®, Titanium alloys or Nitinol.
OCTOBER 22, 2009 TOUR: City’s St. Joe River Dam (Up River Dam) facility
Location: St Joseph’s River off North Anthony Blvd. south of Coliseum Blvd. at Cadet Drive Another great FWEC tour with Bill Maxwell and Andrew Schipper who covered the St. Joseph River Dam with the new switchgear and generator building and the old original 1930s pump building connected to the dam. We were all over the facility and if anyone missed anything it wasn't Bill's fault - 28 members and guests attend. Summary: new switchgear building with two 34.5/4.160 kV transformers, a 1000 kW, 1500 hp diesel generator, protective relaying and supervisory control. The old building has four pumps that draw water from two wet wells and deliver water through valves and two parallel 42" pipes to the filtration plant. Two new pumps operate at 4160 volts from the new switchgear and two older pumps are back-up and operate at 2400 volts delta served from two I&M transformer banks fed from two different lines. The plant is checked twice a day and Dam operation includes adding summer batter boards and removing in the fall and checking trash screens at heavy times during the year. Concrete maintenance work is scheduled in the near future. The city’s water needs come from this dam reservoir, backed up by water impounded at Cedarville and at Hurshtown Reservoir.
Location: 7602 Patriot Crossing in the Southtowne Community Revitalization Enhancement District (CRED), Don Perry guided our group through this fine facility which uses state-of-the-art fiber optics broadband to deliver training to Allen Co schools through ACEnet and Verizon’s Fiber-to-the-Premise. This Public Safety Academy is a regional facility employing state of the art on-site and distance learning training and education offerings for first responders and future public safety leaders to a 12 County region. Its goal is to train over 5000 regional 1st responders, educate future public safety leaders in a dynamic learning environment, and employ best practices and innovative technology in public safety training and education. http://www.publicsafetyacademy.org/ Its mission is as follows:
SEPTEMBER 24, 2009 TOUR: Public Safety Academy of NortheastIndiana
May 16, 2009 TOUR: The Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society
Info: The Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society Inc. is an all-volunteer award-winning organization dedicated to preserving, displaying, and operating historical railroad equipment relevant to the steam era in the midwest. Formed in 1972 to preserve historic steam locomotive no. 765, they've operated special passenger excursions hauling over 100,000 people through 16 states covering 52,000 miles for over twenty years. They recently endeavored to completely rebuild no. 765, which was originally built for the Nickel Plate Railroad in 1944, and the locomotive is now rolling again. You can get more information on their website at www.traintown.org
APRIL 16, 2009 TOUR: TV station WFWA PBS39
(at Coliseum and Crescent) about 25 people were guided by Mark Ryan (Creative Services Manager) and Matt Kyle (Broadcast Engineer) who did an excellent job. This tour provided great insight into all the equipment and expertise required to run a TV station. A big thanks to Mark and Matt.
APRIL EVENT: BIM (Building Information Modeling) Seminar will be held on April 24th at the IPFW campus. Several area companies are sponsoring a seminar by Dana K. “Deke” Smith. He is the executive director of the buildingSMART alliance. That is a dynamic and expanding program of the National Institute of Building Science (NIBS) to improve construction productivity through interoperability and elimination of non-value added effort or waste in the facilities industry. See April's FWEC's Bulletin page for more information.
MARCH 19, 2009 TOUR: City Utilities Sewage Treatment Plant on Dwenger Ave.
We have been working with Mark Gensic, PE, City Manager in Water Resources, on tours of city facilities and our next tour is the sewage plant on Dwenger Ave. originally built in 1940. Mark will be conducting the tour and we will meet in the parking lot across the street from the original 1940 entrance to start our walking tour of the recently modernized plant. Mark will also bring copies of the brochure on the long term control plan for the city’s sewer system. Current work at another site - the dam and pump house and new electrical facilities at the Johnny Apple Seed/Up River Dam which impounds water for treating for city drinking water is still ongoing and a tour of that facility will be pursued for the fall.
FEBRUARY 2009: HARRISON SQUARE & new PARKVIEW FIELD TOUR: Jon Rowe arranged with Tin Cap’s, Brad Shank, to tour the Parkview Field baseball stadium. AFE members joined FWEC and 40 GE employees.
FEBRUARY 19, 2009 TOUR: UNIVERSITY of SAINT FRANCIS
This tour for Thursday night is hosted by the School of Health Sciences at USF and will include a demonstration of their state-of-the-art simulators (dummies.) The presentation along with video clips on these simulators will show how they are used in nursing education. All will have an opportunity to care for a simulator and check their nursing skills. The presentation and tour starts at the lower level of the Doermer building, corner of Leesburg and Spring St, starting in room 063 and then on to the sim lab. Our guide and presenter will be Jennifer Richard RN, MSN, Instructor, Department of Nursing, USF (jrichard@sf.edu) who was recently published by Elsevier Inc. with “Beginning Experiences with Simulation: Asthma in a Pediatric Patient" under ”Clinical Simulation in Nursing” (www.elsevier.com/locate/ecsn) on this topic. The Simulator company’s website is - www.meti.com
JANUARY 13, 2009 EVENT:
IVY TECH, 7 PM: We are invited by the Machinist Group of Northeast Indiana to a presentation by bridge designer, Kurt Heidenreich, on the IPFW pedestrian bridges to be held at Ivy Tech’s auditorium on Tuesday, January 13th at 7PM – (east end of building.) This is a regularly scheduled meeting which they make open to the public at no charge. John Schamber (fwtoolman@hotmail.com) heads up the) heads up the group. They are also running a tour of Ron Nahrwold’s fantastic antique machines collection in the spring.
JANUARY 2009 TOUR: BAE
Location: 2000 Taylor St,
When: Thursday January 15th, 2009, 7 PM
BAE serves aerospace and defense end users and prime contractors with capabilities and products that improve operational safety and enhance mission effectiveness. http://www.baesystems.com/Businesses/EIS/Divisions/PlatformSolutions/index.htm
DECEMBER 2008 TOUR: canceled due to inclement weather
NOVEMBER 20, 2008 TOUR: EVI (Electric Vehicles Inc.)
Another excellent FWEC event included 69 attendees who were treated to a tour of the facility and products and insights from an enthusiastic entrepreneur into the ins and outs of this cutting edge endeavor. EVI President, Jerry Medlin, conducted our tour of EVI, a manufacturer and wholesaler of low-speed electric vehicles and of the LC3s whose equipment and inventory was moved from Odessa, Missouri this year. Jerry is involved in all aspects of this small company which produces material handling equipment such as tuggers, burden carriers and heavy duty quad-steer tracking trailers for the automotive and airline industries in addition to this new LC3 line which brings low-speed, on-road cars to consumers in the FW area and beyond. Jerry is very involved in many aspects of this emerging field of electric driven transportation including the recently announced hybrid bus conversions for local public transportation as well as school buses. Much of the value of the evening was in the sharings of Jerry Medlin in addition to the facility and viewing LC3s in various stages of construction. thanks to Club Member Daniel Metzger for the tour suggestion.
(“Did you know,” there were over 400 US automobile companies in the early teens – many of them electric car companies?)
OCTOBER 23, 2008 TOUR: Nahrwold Collection
The tour of Ron Nahrwold's wonderful collection of many, many old fantastic machines went well with 36 attendees including Ron and his wife, Rose. Nearly all stayed for the two hour tour of two large pole barns, a large basement and the home of Ron and his wife. Attendees were treated to the most gracious hospitality and sharing of unique information and insights by the Nahrwolds and were subjected to continual bombardment of unique rarely seen huge machines, tools, devices, small machines and unique instruments. I know many of the attendees were very impressed with the extent of the collection and spent time pondering the time and effort of those early engineers and builders that must have labored long and hard in difficult circumstances (by modern standards) to produce the monster machines and unique tools that were part of early agriculture and the industrialization of the mid-west. This tour was excellent in all respects from the very accommodating hosts, their extensive collections, and the insight these machines give us to the wonderful past when innovation and creativity were in full force. (Can you tell I was impressed.) A very big thank you to Ron and Rose Nahrwold for this great one-of-a-kind tour._Jim Delaney
SEPTEMBER 2008 TOUR: New 200’ tall Air Traffic Control Tower
at Fort Wayne International airport showed improvements over the old 90’ tower and offered a commanding view for our 46 attendees who also had a presentation and radar room tour. New tower was finished January, 2007.
June 7th 2008 EVENT: GOLF OUTING
Donald Ross Golf Course
7102 South Calhoun Street, Fort Wayne
Donald Ross was a world renowned golf course designer who designed 413 courses including such gems as Pinehurst No. 2 in North Carolina, Seminole in Florida, and site of the 1996 U.S. Open, Oakland Hills outside Detroit. This Fun Filled club event was planned by Jake Dinius, Mary Gynn, and Terry Van Daele for Saturday June 7 and began with an 11:30AM lunch followed by a scramble style outing with a Shotgun start at 1PM.
MAY 22, 2008 TOUR: SCIENCE CENTRAL
1950 North Clinton, Fort Wayne, IN
Our evening consisted of four parts, greeting by new Director, exhibit presentation, tour of old plant and refreshments. Our group was greeted by the new director of Science Central, Martin Fisher, who gave us some background on Science Central and bring us up to date on this fine Fort Wayne attraction asset.
We were also brought up to date on the work of a GE volunteer group that has been designing and building a new GE turbine generator exhibit for the main exhibit hall. This new display will mount on top of the original CL&P #2 Generator and will stand over 15’ above the 1930’s generator. The exhibit will mimic the running of the old power plant and visitors will be able to operate the display, putting coal into the bunker, weighing it, placing it on the grate, igniting it and boiling water to make steam and running the turbine. The interactive display will take the operators through the paces required to operate the plant up to and including generating electricity and paralleling output with the electric grid. Failure to operate the display in sequence will require restarting the process to get it right. Successful operation of the generator will reward the operator with appropriate bells and whistles.
In addition to touring the exhibit area and the new under construction generator exhibit, the group was given the opportunity to see behind the scenes on the boiler side of the plant. For those wanting to climb stairs to the top, we were allowed to climb the open stairs and grated levels in the old auxiliary bay to the top fan floor level. This was very cool. We returned to the office area by the front original stairs and then returned to the lobby by the elevator where refreshments were available. A great time to visit with fellow club members and staff members, thanks for another excellent tour!
APRIL 17, 2008 TOUR of the Air National Guard
was a big success with 33 members attending. The group tour the facilities of the United States Air Force's 122nd Fighter Wing the Air National Guard fighter unit located at Fort Wayne International Airport since transferred to Fort Wayne in 1954. In a national emergency, the 122FW may be ordered to active duty by the President and is also available on orders from the Governor of Indiana to assist in the event of a disaster, disturbance or other local emergency. Aircraft: The Blacksnakes currently fly the Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcon, a multi-role 1970’s General Dynamics jet fighter aircraft. The F-16 is a single-engine, tactical aircraft with a M61 Vulcan cannon in the left wing root, and two AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles, one on each wingtip on a dedicated rail and can also be armed with a variety of air-to-air missiles and air-to-ground missiles, rockets or bombs, carried on a number of hard points under the wings. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/122d_Fighter_Wing
MARCH 20, 2008 TOUR: INNOVATION Center & RFID
At: NE Corner of Crescent/ Stellhorn and St. Joe Rd/Hobson
The Innovation Center was the site of the March tour where club members were brought up to speed on RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) and Image Recognition which has many applications in industry as well as in the security field. Terry VanDaele had arranged this tour through the IPFW professor, Rob Palevich, in charge of this joint venture. It was a great update in this current technological application.
The evening also included a presentation by a group promoting a concept called Tek.Venture bringing art and technology together in a laboratory setting to promote innovation and creativity combining senior local technical and art talent with young inquisitive minds in a creative supporting environment. The group was advised of activities such as a traveling version “Tek.Mobile” and a “Chain Reaction Challenge” competition.
Location: 5501 US Highway 30 W, Fort Wayne, IN 46818
FEBRUARY 21, 2008 TOUR: SWEETWATER SOUND
Had a great tour, visiting/socializing, and great attendance. This meeting combined the FWEC and the AFE Facilities Engineers during Engineers Week and was arranged by Jon Rowe AFE and FWEC member. Total attendance was ~100 and a great time had by all. We toured Sweetwater Sound’s 180,000 square foot facility that is like a mall on its just completing $34 million campus. We were treated to the crown jewel of the new facility, its 250-seat, state-of-the-art auditorium/ performance theatre with four separate sound systems, as well as three new recoding studios, all designed by legendary acoustician/studio designer Russ Berger. A fascinating tour of this outstanding local high tech business.
JANUARY 23, 2008 TOUR: FORT WAYNE NEWSPAPERS
Location: 600 West Main Street, Fort Wayne, IN 46802
Phil Haggerty from the Fort Wayne Newspapers offered a great tour of the new press in the brand new impressive building at the northwest corner of Main and Van Buren. The 47,000-square-foot building houses a 60-foot-tall, six-tower printing press, part of the $34.8-million expansion by the newspaper publishing company jointly owned by The News-Sentinel and The Journal Gazette. http://http://fwnextweb1.fortwayne.com/press
NOVEMBER 29, 2007 TOUR: Warbird Micro Brewery
Location: Warbird Brewing Company,
10515 Majic Port Lane
Fort Wayne, IN 46819, near the FW International Airpor
Background: The Warbird Brewing Company combines two favorite past times of its founder, Doctor Dave Holmes, of making hobby home brewed beer and his fascination with war air craft called war birds into one pretty cool business. Dave’s titles such as Operations Group Commander, 194th Brewing Wing, 1st Brew Force, reflect his patriotism and love of military aircraft. Dave’s interest in and pursuit of home brewing and enjoyment and encouragement of friends grew into the Warbird Brewery venture we will be touring. You can learn more about Warbird and Dave Holmes by visiting the Warbird Web Site: http://www.warbirdbrewing.com