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About Robert Tarleton

Its in my blood

Some guys grow up under the hood of a car, on a ball field, or in front of a video game. Not me. I was building radios. I’ve always had a passion for all things wireless.

My Formal Education

I graduated college with a double major in Finance and Economics. Over the past 30 years, I’ve gained a broad base of experience across these diverse industries: computer software, aerospace, semiconductor manufacturing, aviation, mortgage banking, corporate contracts and telecommunications.

My positions have varied from computer programmer to database administrator, from network administrator to airline pilot & flight instructor (I do fly airplanes and teach others how to fly, see my separate page on that), and from engineer to a sales technology consultant.

For the last ten years, I’ve worked for some of the largest wireless telecom carriers, delivering complex wireless mobilization solutions to large corporate customers. Today, I’ve taken the sum of the parts and brought it down to the individual user and small office space.

My Family Telecom History

My family got started in wireless and telecommunications back when radio was in its infancy. Escaping the family farm in Ohio and heading to New York City on his own, my grandfather worked three jobs and attended “Radio School,” graduating in 1921, the year after America’s first commercial radio station went live in Pittsburgh.

His first job was as a shipboard radio telegraph operator for the Dodge family yacht (of Dodge motor car fame), using Morse Code to communicate on the high seas. Eventually working for AT&T for most of his life and having been an Amateur Radio operator, my grandfather infected me with the wireless bug at a very young age.

In fact, even before I learned to drive, I earned my Extra Class Ham Radio license, call sign K3HF. Naturally, as computer technology and the Internet developed, my wireless passion grew in even broader and more complex directions.

From Car Radios to iPhones

As a young man, my cars always had various two-way radios, and when the first cellular telephone networks arrived on the scene, I was the first guy on the block who installed one (1984).

It was a massive analog trunk-mounted beast, which by today’s standards was very limited in range, voice quality, and general capability. And, of course, it was fantastically expensive to operate. There were no “buckets of minutes” in those days… and the roaming charges cost a bundle!

Then came the bag phones and the “brick” phones, which gradually evolved into the beautifully engineered Motorola StarTac. I had them all!

Today, we have mostly the iPhone and Android family of devices. Each of these contains more computing horsepower and capability than the last PC we bought... and far more than we used to send men to the moon all those years ago.

Well, I’m the guy who has one of each, just for the fun of it, and at any given time, am probably carrying at least two of them with me.