Doug Ranly

Performance + Durability = Game Changer

We first arrived in the Iraqi desert early in 2004. The invasion dubbed “shock and awe” happened in 2003, so our battalion was part of the rebuilding phase. This was well before all the fancy armored vehicles appeared in theater. The “armor” on our trucks and humvees consisted of sheet metal we cut via torch and welded together. This armor “worked” for bullets, but not so much for IEDs. We would later learn the hard way that the IEDs were a much larger threat.

Gearcreep: When stuff is left laying around and starts getting in the way of important tasks.

For anyone who has kids, gearcreep is a daily adventure. Books, bags, lunchboxes, one blue sock, and clarinet reeds somehow can’t cross the forcefield that is found approximately 10 feet inside my front door. Eventually, the forcefield can’t hold back the massive piles of junk and the gear starts creeping across the floor, only to be found at 2 am while stumbling down the hall to the bathroom.

The first product Sporty’s ever sold was a receiver/scanner. The small radio allowed student pilots to listen to the interactions between air traffic controllers and airline pilots. By hearing these professionals speak on the radio, students could learn how to better communicate when they were flying. The radios have drastically changed since we first started in 1961, but pilots still like to listen to each other while on the ground.