A Little History...

Hi, My name is Derek and I'm from St. Louis, Mo. I have many hobbies but really enjoy building circuits from scratch on breadboards and copper clads. I love all things computer related including security, servers, software development and coding placefiles. I'm a ham radio operator (Extra Class) and love building antennas, transistor amplifiers and communicating worldwide on my HF/VHF/UHF transceivers. I work in the private sector on Howitzers and their optical fire control. Along with many other Military Weapons and Instruments, Thanks to David Wells (RIP). I also really enjoy coding and first started when I was 12 in Microsoft QBasic, with help from a book at the library. QBasic lead me to Visual Basic, then it was on to Delphi and C/C++ to compile standalone applications. I enjoy both Linux & Windows environments and code in both.

In 2006 I started out on GRLevelXStuff with Aaron and Jeff Lake (RIP). I got my start by being the first to create the storm track projection cone via a placefile for GRLevelX. These cone projections were removed from GRLevelX Software (GRTV) after Baron threatened lawsuits so the demand was high but it landed in a gray area of development. So I then formed the website GRLevelXMods and wrote the software GR Manual Storm Tracks which finally provided GRLevelX users with fully customizable storm track projections (Fan, Wedge & Cone) and custom ETA city lists.

In 2008, Eric Wheaton and I then joined forces. He was and still is the best coder within the GR Community. He was years ahead of the competition with his placefiles and was the first to sucessfully create County Outline Unions which was a huge achievement. Most don't know this but he helped Jeff Lake and Allisonhouse with numerous projects. He has a very unique way of thinking and coding that I still haven't seen in anyone else and I've been coding for 25+ years. After all these years, Eric and I are still great friends, still working in the GR community, coding behind the scenes, creating a lot of custom content for other's use without the public credits.