Robert Carter, author of FOB-10, was born in Syracuse, New York on February 18, 1939. His sister Jean was born a year later and brother Bill came along eight years later. After moving around a little in central New York State the family settled in his father?s little hometown of Morrisville. His father, Robert Senior, taught at Morrisville Agricultural and Technical Institute and his mother, Claudia, was the school nurse/teacher at Morrisville Eaton Central School. Their family home sat on five acres of land that was sandwiched between two farms about a mile west of town.
Growing up in Morrisville was easy in the late forties and early fifties. Bob and his buddies had lots of freedom to hunt, fish, hike and camp in the surrounding countryside. Robert was a restless boy who didn?t like school much. He found himself bored with everything except the math and science classes. He excelled in these even without studying. His main interested was in airplanes of all kinds. He built and tried to fly model airplanes from an early age. He hung around the local airport where the big boys had their Piper Cubs and Aeroncas. Every now and then someone would give him a ride and maybe let him take the controls for awhile. It was the beginning of a life-long infatuation with anything and everything having to do with aviation. Shortly after he turned eighteen he left school and joined the Navy. After boot camp the Navy sent him to 42 weeks of Electronic Technician school. He spent the rest of his enlistment on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Antietam CVS-36 that operated out of Pensacola, FL most of the time. Any spare time he had was spent watching flight operations.
After his discharge from the Navy in February 1961 he went back home to Morrisville and worked as an electronics technician for General Electric in Syracuse, New York. That lasted for about five months before his restless nature took over again and he hired on with Philco as a technical representative (Tekrep) assigned to the US Air Force in Japan. While processing into Philco Corp. in Philadelphia, PA it was discovered that too many people had been hired to go to Japan so he agreed to go to Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. That was his home base for the next two years. In 1963 Philco lost the Air Force contract in the Philippines but picked up one in Europe. Bob ended up without a job and returned to his parent's home in Morrisville to relax and enjoy the summer.
After a month or so at home, he accepted an assignment to Headquarters Central European Comm. Region at Ramstein Air Force Base, Ramstien, Germany as a ground electronics field engineer. Working out of the headquarters he traveled to Air Force bases in Germany, France, Italy and North Africa repairing ground navigation aids and training Air Force technicians. When the Air Force decided to convert the contract positions to Air Force Engineering Technical Service positions he became a Department of Defense civilian employed directly by the government. Thus started his Civil Service career that would last for the next 30 years.
After four years in Europe he found himself homesick again for the good old US. The Air Force had started a program to relocate civilian employees who had been overseas a long time, sending them back to the states. Bob took advantage of it and arranged a transfer to Luke Air Force Base, west of Phoenix, AZ. Now he, for the first time in his professional career, was working with and on airplanes. First it was all the electronic systems on the F-100 Super Saber and later the inertial navigation, Doppler radar, and nav weapons delivery computer systems on the A-7D ground support fighter. His next door neighbor, Bob Elgins, worked at an FAA long-range radar site 50 miles north of Phoenix. With his help Bob transferred from the Department of Defense to the Federal Aviation Administration and started working at Humbolt Mountain Long-Range Radar site. It was a turning point in his life and the beginning of a 28-year career with the FAA that would include seven moves. Bob always considered working for the Air Force a job, without much chance of advancement. But the FAA was different; it was a career with plenty of opportunities to advance as far as you could go.
About the time he joined the FAA the government expanded the Korean War GI bill so he started going to night school. He started majoring in electrical engineering, switched to physics and many years later ended up as a mathematics major. He intended to finish an undergraduate technical major and then go on to get a MBA, but being in his early forties, after fifteen years of night school and having accomplished most of his career objectives, he decided he had gone to school enough and ended there. His career with the FAA took him from Phoenix to another long-range radar site in West Cummington, MA where he stayed for one year. Then it was off to Guam, in the south Pacific, for four years and another long-range radar site. When he left Guam he was the Assistant Resident Director/Sector Manager.
His next stop was the New England Regional Office located in Burlington, MA, outside of Boston, where he stayed for one year. Then two years working Windsor Locke, CT followed by three years as the site manager at North Truro Long-Range Radar site. From Truro he went to the FAA Washington DC headquarters for four years, where he worked as an engineering program manager. And last but not least, he made his final move to Harrisburg, PA to be the Assistant Sector Manager. He was promoted to Sector Manager and remained in that position until the sector was closed and he retired in 1996. Bob's interest in aviation has remained consistent through all the moves and all the years. He has had a parallel career in what he jokingly refers to as the back alleys of aviation, flying and wrenching on many different kinds of airplanes in many different places. He has flown part-time charter service, crop dusting, aircraft ferrying, pipeline patrol, corporate flying and been a flight instructor. He has owned a number of different aircraft over the years and currently owns and flies a highly modified IFR equipped Grumman Yankee. He is a commercial, multi engine instrument rated airplane pilot, flight instructor airplane and instrument, and has a private helicopter rating. In addition he holds an Aircraft and Powerplant mechanics rating with Inspection Authority.
When he's not at his computer writing you'll find him at the local airport teaching someone how to fly instruments or doing an annual inspection on a friend's airplane. He loves aviation as much at 65 as he did at 15 and plans to fly as long as he can. Bob learned to write while he was a supervisor and manager for the FAA. It has always seemed to him that after he left the hands-on level of maintenance all he ever did was read and write. If he wasn?t actually doing the writing then he was critiquing the writing of others.
Either way the last 15 to 20 years of his career were spent using words as his tools. He wrote letters, orders, reprimands, commendations, performance reports, activity reports, recommendations, directions, plans etc., etc., etc. He didn?t find it the least bit difficult to move from writing documents for the government to writing commercial fiction. Although FOB-10 is fictional and a total fabrication, his years of government service and extensive aviation experience tell him that it could happen.
Bob currently lives in Newberrytown, PA with his wife Beth, dog Moch, and two cats Shade and Dilly. Bob has two children, Ken and Cathy who have given him six granddaughters. Beth has a daughter, Heather.
