Nick Barbin, Optimum Design Associates, Dublin, CA

Tom Stout, Optimum Design Associates, Dublin, CA

Glenn Wells, Intelect Network Technologies, Richardson, TX

(L to R: Glen Wells, Tom Stout, and Nick Barbin)

SPRING 99
PARTICIPANTS
AND SOFTWARE USED

Nick Barbin
Optimum Design Associates
Dublin, CA
Design Software: VeriBest

Roy Beckman
Harris Canada Inc.
Calgary, AB Canada
Design Software: Mentor Graphics

Don Folk
KAW/USA
Nashua, NH
Design Software: Cadence

Jim Hoch
Mariposa Technology
Petaluma, CA
Design Software: VeriBest

John Sovinsky
CAD Design Services/Software
Santa Clara, CA
Design Software: CAD Design

Tom Stout
Optimum Design Associates
Dublin, CA
Design Software: VeriBest

Russell Sunden
Cisco Systems
Austin, TX
Design Software: Cadence Allegro

Glenn Wells
Intelect Network Technologies Inc.
Richardson, TX
Design Software: VeriBest

(L to R: Don Folk, Russell Sunden, John Sovinsky,
Jim Hoch and Roy Beckman)

Contest Information and Results

The spring 1999 PCB Top Gun Hall of Fame Contest was held at PCB Design Conference West, March 21-23. Eight contestants competed in three areas--a board design, which accounted for 50% of the score; a written test, which counted for 35% of the score; and a personal interview, which counted for 15% of the score.

The technical coordinator for the contest was Steve Granger, TGA, Norcross, GA. He was responsible for the development of the board design, putting together the bill of materials, creating the netlist and helping to evaluate the board criteria.

Objective: One of Printed Circuit Designs core precepts is to take every opportunity to promote PCB engineers and designers as the salt of the earth. Since we cannot directly influence their salary or other compensation, we have elected to direct a spotlight on these people whenever possible. The PCB Top Gun Hall of Fame is one event that helps us do this.

Board Design: Each participant was given a code name to use for all data turned in and anywhere in the design, so that those people evaluating the board did not know what board belonged to what person or what software was used for the design. No board design information was given out prior to being on-site for the contest.

To view the design guidelines, click here.

To view the board evaluation checklist, click here.

The plots of the board design from each participant are available by clicking on the participant's name below.

Nick Barbin
Roy Beckman
Don Folk
Jim Hoch
John Sovinsky
Tom Stout
Russell Sunden
Glenn Wells

Written Test: The written test consisted of multiple choice and fill in the blank questions and covered areas such as the engineering side of PCB design, schematics, high-speed design and industry acronyms.

Personal Interviews: Each participant was interviewed by a panel of three judges from the design industry. The judges were:

Kelly Dack, CAD 2000, San Diego, CA
Rick Hartley, Applied Innovations, Dublin, OH
Mike Wilson, Dell Computer Corp., Round Rock, TX

The panel asked questions about design industry experience, philosophy of design, etc. Each judge gave the contestant a score on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the highest. Each participant was scored immediately after the interview with no discussion between the judges about what and how to score.

Final Results: All scores for each part of the contest were given to one person. After everything was turned in, final scores were compiled based on the percentages for each part.

For the spring 1999 contest, there was a tie for second place, which is why there were three winners.

Individual scores are only released to the contest participants.