all about me
Background
I was born and raised in
Lynchburg, Virginia
just like my mother. My father's family comes
from King George County
in Virginia. My parents still live in Lynchburg, and I have a brother and
a sister that both live in Richmond, Virginia. I moved to Atlanta, Georgia
in 1982 after graduate school and I live in a suburb of Atlanta called
Alpharetta.
Education
I graduated from Brookville High School
(home of the Bees!) in
Lynchburg, VA
and then spent 6 fun years at Virginia Tech
getting my Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Electrical Engineering. I
specialized in antennas and electromagnetics, and worked for the
Satellite
Communications Group while in grad school under the guidance of
Dr. Warren Stutzman.
My graduate work was sponsored by NASA
and involved the prediction of the effects rain has on Earth-Space
communications links at frequencies above 10 GHz.
Family
One of my hobbies is genealogy, and I've created a website about the
Dishman Family of Virginia with all of
my research.
Travels
I've been lucky enough to travel to some
interesting places on vacation and as part of my job.
Occupation
Since 1982
I've worked as an antenna designer and system engineer. I started my
employment with the Electro-Products division of
Scientific-Atlanta and rose to the position of Principal Engineer. In
April, 1999 Scientific-Atlanta sold their satellite communications businesses to
ViaSat, Inc. I'm currently an Antenna
Systems Engineer at the
ViaSat Antenna Systems division in Duluth, Georgia.
I design earth stations for commercial satellite communications systems.
Mainly I design the reflector antennas used for earth stations, but I've
designed all kinds of antennas in my career covering the frequency range between
100 MHz and 40 GHz.
Work Projects
I've worked on many interesting projects during my career. Some of them
are described on this page.
Publications
Stutzman, W.L. and Dishman, W.K., "A Simple Model for Predicting Rain
Attenuation Along an Earth-Satellite Path", Abstracts of Scientific Papers,
U.R.S.I. XXth General Assembly, Washington, D.C., p. 255, 10-19 Aug 1981.
Marshall, R.E., Bostian, C.W., Dishman, W.K., Stapor, D.P., and Lyall, R.C.,
"An 11.6 GHz Dual Polarized Site Diversity Experiment Using the Sirio
Satellite", Abstracts of Scientific Papers, U.R.S.I. XXth General Assembly,
Washington, D.C., p. 363, 10-19 Aug 1981.
Dishman, W.K.,
Estimation of rain attenuation on earth-space millimeter wave communications
links. Master's Thesis, Virginia Tech University, Blacksburg, Virginia,
1982.
Stutzman, W.L. and Dishman, W.K., "A simple model for the estimation of
rain-induced attenuation along earth-space paths at millimeter wavelengths",
Radio Science, Vol. 17, No. 6, pp. 1465-1476, Nov-Dec 1982.
Cook, J.H. and Dishman, W.K., "An Improved Scanning Automatic Tracking
Antenna for Telemetry Applications", Proceedings of the XXVth International
Telemetering Conference, San Diego, CA, pp. 235-242, Oct. 30 - Nov. 2, 1989.
Dishman, W.K., Hess, D.W., and Koster, A.R., "A
Dual-Ported Probe for Planar Near-Field Measurements", AMTA Proceedings,
14th Annual Meeting and Symposium, Columbus, Ohio, pp. 11-9 to 11-14, 19-23 Oct
1992.
Dishman, W.K. and Manning, S.J, "Validation
Testing of the Planar Near-Field Range Facility at SPAR Aerospace Limited",
AMTA Proceedings, 14th Annual Meeting and Symposium, Columbus, Ohio, pp. 11-15
to 11-20, 19-23 Oct 1992.
