Jeff Petsinger

Jeff Petsinger holds a Master’s in mechanical engineering and is currently a Principal Staff Mechanical Engineer at Motorola Solutions. Jeff has spent over four decades designing custom communications solutions for the US Government. His early work focused on microelectronics and microelectromechanical (MEMS) design, and he has most recently transitioned to designing low SWaP (Size, Weight, and Power) devices for small unmanned aerial systems (UAS). This most recent work led to his discovery of the incredible capability that can be built into tiny drones.

Growing up as a child in the sixties in a home with a bomb shelter filled with MREs and canned food from the garden, Jeff was instilled with an appreciation for self-reliance. This inspired him to design and build a super-insulated, passive solar home with a well and septic on two acres of land. He hopes to install solar panels with battery storage to cut the few remaining utility lines and live independently from the world. To that end, he invested in a solar electric vehicle (SEV) company named Aptera, which makes a car that can collect up to 40 miles of free range per day from the solar cells embedded in its body. He expects to receive his 600-mile range car in 2025 in anticipation of long road trips across the country. It is featured in chapter one of Guerrilla Drones.

As a full-blown, five-alarm INTJ on the Meyers-Briggs personality Type Indicator (MBTI), Jeff dislikes sharing his toys because he feels they are unique and no one else can appreciate them like he does. When his oldest daughter displayed an aptitude for playing the piano, he went shopping for a grand piano. He discovered they were still being built with materials and techniques over one hundred years old. After capitulating to a stunted market and buying a Mason and Hamlin Model B built in 1917, he immediately launched an Indiegogo project called “Evolutionary Piano” to design and build a modern grand piano using computer simulation to optimize a ribless carbon fiber soundboard. Sadly, the project did not attract sufficient funding. Still, it offers insight into Jeff’s belief that most of society’s problems can be solved with technology.

Jeff married his wife, Julie, finished his Master’s degree and built his custom house in 1990. His first two children were born a few years later. Jeff and Julie home-schooled their children through eighth grade, and delivered ninety-eighth percentile students to the local public high school. Their third child came along when Jeff was forty-two and she keeps him young while she completes her nursing degree. Jeff’s wife passed away in 2020 from breast cancer, and he is now in the process of redefining his purpose in life and making a new plan for retirement as a widower. When he isn’t building homes, writing novels, or starting crowdfunding projects, Jeff likes cooking, gardening, making wine and fishing, hunting, hiking, and planning international travel.