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 Author  Topic: Dick's Career
Jeff D

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Post a Reply To This Topic    Reply With Quotes     Edit Message     View Profile of Jeff D   Send Email To Jeff D Posted on: Aug 4, 2020 - 10:44am
Our fearless forum leader, Dick Washichek, let me read a document he had written at the request of the college he attended. They were looking for success stories to help motivate students. His successful career in drafting, eventually becoming his own boss with his own business, fit the bill. To be honest I expected a rather dry work but was pleasantly surprised by an interesting, entertaining history of drafting during the pre and post digital age. Dick has a gift for writing. I also enjoyed seeing the examples of his work, particularly the military aircraft detailed drawings. I even recognized a pistol parts schematic of a unique gun that I own, a 5 shot .22LR revolver that is so small it fits on a belt buckle. I think it very cool that I was using one of his drawings when cleaning it, from the mid-80's on, long before I got to know its creator. Of course I think his best works are the beautifully detailed PT drawings. OK I'll stop embarrassing him now, here's a link to the document:

http://www.ptboatforum.com/RJWashichek_02-19-2019-E.pdf



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  Scott C

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Post a Reply To This Topic    Reply With Quotes     Edit Message     View Profile of Scott C   Send Email To Scott C Posted on: Aug 4, 2020 - 2:38pm
what a fantastic career Dick has had. He is a great member to the forum. He has been very generous to the forum with his knowledge and finances. without him this forum may not exist. take care Dick.. thanks for sharing. Scott

Scott Campbell 2nd gen,PT 248
Ron 20

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  Scott C

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Post a Reply To This Topic    Reply With Quotes     Edit Message     View Profile of Scott C   Send Email To Scott C Posted on: Aug 4, 2020 - 2:38pm
See above . . .

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  Scott C

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Post a Reply To This Topic    Reply With Quotes     Edit Message     View Profile of Scott C   Send Email To Scott C Posted on: Aug 4, 2020 - 2:40pm
sorry last post on twice. you can delete one. scott

Scott Campbell 2nd gen,PT 248
Ron 20

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Jeff D

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Post a Reply To This Topic    Reply With Quotes     Edit Message     View Profile of Jeff D   Send Email To Jeff D Posted on: Aug 6, 2020 - 6:44am
I became interested in PT's in the 80's when I was big into R/C boats and bought a set of large hull plans. But life changed and I never started the build. Then around 2005 I saw a photo of a commercial RTR R/C Elco 80 PT boat that actually offended me it was so badly done. It was a view from the front, the chart house windows were huge and crooked with the rest of the boat to match. So I decided to start a 3D project and create plans as accurately as I could. I found ptboats.org (they seem to be down???) and bought most of their Elco 80 drawings, both factory produced and others. Then around 2006 I found Dick's forum here and became truly hooked!

Hey Dick, can you give us some history of your work in helping preserve PT history? I know there was a board before this one but don't know much else. And anyone else willing to share their history are most welcome. I know some members have been involved with PT's for a long long time.



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Will Day

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Post a Reply To This Topic    Reply With Quotes     Edit Message     View Profile of Will Day   Send Email To Will Day Posted on: Aug 6, 2020 - 12:12pm
I think you are right on, Jeff. A history of this organization, which is unique in many respects, would make for fascinating reading.

Will

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Jeff H

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Post a Reply To This Topic    Reply With Quotes     Edit Message     View Profile of Jeff H  Posted on: Aug 6, 2020 - 7:12pm
I didn’t realize Dicks background until I looked through this. So many different subjects and business commitments and he still made time to get this forum going. Also nice to put a face to his posts. Congratulations to you and your wife on your years together and prayers for many more!


Thanks!
Jeff

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Dick

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Post a Reply To This Topic    Reply With Quotes     Edit Message     View Profile of Dick   Send Email To Dick Posted on: Aug 13, 2020 - 3:41pm
Thanks for all the kind words - happily14 out of the 170-plus message post viewers clicked on the career .PDF link and tortured themselves with the read. Throughout my career I was fortunate to find and follow a career path that I absolutely enjoyed, or better said, loved, even to this day as an old fart in his 70’s and a retiree.

I started out in my colleges years as a drafting student and started earning money designing homes for contractors as a part time way to earn money for college. Funny I designed seven homes while attending college and received $75.00 per set of plans, each set consisted of 10 sheets. Typically, a plot plan, three dimensional view, floor plan, elevations plan, cross-sections, foundation plan, floor framing, ceiling framing, rafter framing, wall framing and $75.00 seemed an absolute fortune at the time in 1966 - it was just fun not work. In reality it must have been about 30/35-cents an hour - - - A mogul I’m not! By the end of my career I was charging more than 400-times that amount - and sadly, still not a mogul . . . . . That’s life.

After college I became a Technical Illustrator, then added on duties of Technical Writing for military and commercial aviation. To balance the technical side I ventured into Graphic Design and finished adding to my career collection with Industrial Design. The industrial design mainly dealt with ground support equipment for Army Aviation and maintenance stands for a variety of military airframes. All four disciplines ran more or less concurrent throughout my career, it just depended on day to day which hat I wore.

PT Boats - I have never purposely tried to preserve the history nor was it ever my goal. I just share what ever I got, or was sent to me, or I’d learned about, it is simply for the love of the boats. It all started back in 1994 when I received a gift of a MS-Dos computer game “PT Boat Simulator”. I played the game a few times, but never liked anything MS-Dos, it was just clunky. My business and industry were Mac computer dominated and more enjoyable to use. However, in the box was a little pamphlet “Know Your PT Boat” from the PT Boats Inc. organization. also Included, was an order list for drawings. At the time I recalled as a kid seeing one of my favorite war movies, “They Were Expendable” many times in the fifties on local southern California TV stations such as KTTV and KTLA. Unlike major networks, they played movies and cartoons all day. After viewing the drawing list and interested in anything “engineering wise” decided to order some of the drawings. Then more and more drawings and books. Nearly a thousand dollars later and after viewing this information, I knew I needed to draw the Elco 80-footer. I started drawing the boat as shown on the plans, in a isometric (three dimensional) view, especially the inside, a below deck look since nothing existed at the time. After completing the drawing and making it a poster, I printed up 300 copies and donated them to PT Boat Inc to sell and raise funds. In addition there were several 3’x4’ mounted poster made for educational and other presentations by the organization.

Then in 1995 I created the PT Boats Inc. website and hosted and web mastered it for them. At the same time I created my own PT Boat website, “The Knights of the Sea”, then a message board, the PT Boat Forum. A few years later I joined both of my Knights of the Sea site and Message Board together with PT Boats Inc, to drive more visitors to the organization. Later in 2006 I separated the Message Board back into its own website due to some unfortunate politics. However, I continued to design and maintain the main PT Boats Inc. “ptboats.org” website until just recently. This left the message board, “The PT Boat Forum” and its extensive expansion as my main effort.

I later created and donated to the Portland Oregon group, “Save the PT Boat. Inc” a newly designed website along with making a poster of the restored PT658 as well as a detailed illustrated booklet about the 658, which they sell on their Ship’s Store.

More recently I designed and donated a poster of PT305 for its restoration group. One of the 305’s volunteer and message board member, Bob Wade, asked me if I could create a large 6’ x 4’ display poster they could hang in front of the Restoration Pavilion. This display would help educate visitors what a PT Boat was and what the below deck look like. Along with large display poster, I designed and print 100 copies of a 13” x 19” poster as a gift to each of the volunteers working on the restoration, as my gratitude for their hard work. It was so well received, the museum asked if they could get permission to print more and give them out as donation rewards and/or to entice donations. I believe as of the launch, of the newly restored 305, they had given out some 3,000 posters. Since then, the display posters has been completely reworked to match the existing boat detail configuration and new artwork created with the final color scheme as used on the current boat. This artwork is now hanging in the boat house.

Along with the above, several members, including; Al Ross, Jeff Davidson, Jerry Gilmartin, Ted Walther, to mention some, have all sent materials such as, parts catalogs, technical manuals and the likes, I then scanned and/or converted the materials to PDF files and have shared them with everyone on the “Documents Page”, This includes “An Administrative History . . . . . .” a completely retyped 196-page document by members; Frank Andruss Sr., Jeff Davidson, Will Day, Jerry Gilmartin, Gary Paulsen, Al Ross, Ted Walther, my wife Mary Ann and myself.
Also, and more recently, all the scanned microfilm blueprints from Elco and Higgins have been made downloadable from the “Documents Page”.

Other than that, I just simply like to make available to the public what ever I find or is sent to me. If the items are not already in some digital format, I convert the material for the “Documents” page and share with all.

Again, Thank You for the kind words . . . .



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Jeff D

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Post a Reply To This Topic    Reply With Quotes     Edit Message     View Profile of Jeff D   Send Email To Jeff D Posted on: Aug 13, 2020 - 5:28pm
Thank you Dick for all you do for us, and what you've done for me personally.


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Will Day

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Post a Reply To This Topic    Reply With Quotes     Edit Message     View Profile of Will Day   Send Email To Will Day Posted on: Aug 14, 2020 - 9:19am
I heartily second that, Jeff. Dick, thanks from all of us.

Will

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