Bill Geyer
Academic Instructor at United States Naval Test Pilot School
Mechanicsville, Maryland, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolBill Geyer is an academic instructor and experienced flight test engineer with 11 years in his current teaching role and a long career in naval rotary-wing flight testing. He combines hands-on aeronautical engineering expertise from Penn State with deep practical experience as V-22 ship suitability lead and Naval Flight Test School instructor. As the ArduPilot TradHeli maintainer and contributor to QGroundControl, he bridges embedded flight-control development, UI work for cross-platform ground stations, and technical documentation for a major open-source drone ecosystem. His code contributions focus on rotor speed governors, servo management, and adapting UI setup pages to new ArduPilot firmware, reflecting both low-level control systems knowledge and user-facing sensitivity. Based in Mechanicsville, MD, he donates significant time to improve TradHeli capabilities, a less-visible but critical niche that keeps complex helicopter autopilots reliable. Colleagues know him for translating flight-test rigor into clear docs, robust firmware fixes, and pragmatic instructor-led training.
11 years of coding experience
3 years of employment as a software developer
United States Naval Test Pilot SchoolMaster of Science - MS, Aeronautical/Aerospace Engineering, Master of Science - MS, Aeronautical/Aerospace Engineering at Penn State University
Github Skills (14)
control-systems10
qml10
embedded10
drones10
c-language10
cprogramming-language10
autopilot10
sys10
qt10
documentation10
mavlink9
ui-design8
pix6
px45
Programming languages (5)
Github contributions (5)
ArduPilot/ardupilot
Apr 2017 - Dec 2022
ArduPlane, ArduCopter, ArduRover, ArduSub source
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:452 reviews, 440 commits, 179 PRs in 5 years 9 months
Contributions summary:Bill primarily contributed to the ArduPilot project, focusing on enhancements and fixes related to Traditional Helicopter (TradHeli) functionality. The commits demonstrate a deep understanding of flight control systems, particularly related to rotor speed control, servo management, and the implementation of a new rotor speed governor system. The code changes involve a wide range of modifications, including core flight controller logic, parameter updates, and integration of various components for TradHeli-specific features. These modifications often affect throttle curve logic, and also involved adjustments to several control modes.
arducopterauvdronerovuas
ArduPilot/ardupilot_wiki
Oct 2017 - Nov 2022
Repository for ArduPilot wiki issues and wiki-specific website infrastructure.
Role in this project:Technical Writer
Technical WriterContributions:83 reviews, 41 commits, 30 PRs in 5 years 1 month
Contributions summary:Bill primarily contributed to the documentation and setup guides for the ArduPilot wiki. Their commits involved updating and adding content to various sections of the wiki, including instructions for connecting and calibrating the system, setup procedures for the swashplate, rotor speed control, and autotune, as well as pre-flight testing. They also fixed mistakes and added additional information and links.
ardupilotinfrastructuretiddlywiki5autopilotwiki
Find and Hire Top DevelopersWe’ve analyzed the programming source code of over 60 million software developers on GitHub and scored them by 50,000 skills. Sign-up on Prog,AI to search for software developers.