Matt Swartzlander introduced today’s speaker, Rick Hedrick who is the CEO of Planewave Instruments in Adrian. The company manufacturers astronomical telescopes. Their HQ was in California and they had a facility in Deerfield Michigan. They moved their operation to Adrian 3 years ago after purchasing the former Adrian Training School property north of town and had 30 employees. Their staff now numbers 72! The company was founded in 2006. Since relocating, they have built one new building and have plans to build another. They ship products worldwide.Rick said he attended a junior college in California where he studied physics and was going to transfer to UCLA but while he was there, he saw a professor who was an astronomer at a Science Club talk and which encouraged him to get into astrophotography. He did that on campus that hosed an observatory, dark room, etc. He was hooked, he said.
He and some fellow students looked in to starting a telescope-making class. They approached a professor and were able to sign 10 students up in 1991 and started making 6-inch mirrors. They then made 16 and 20-inch telescopes. Rick they got involved in Visual Amateur Astronomy. Then six in the class decided to make a 42-inch telescope which, at the time exceeded the largest one made to date which was 41-inch!
A neighbor who lived near the campus was curious enough about what they were doing that he eventually persuaded them to build the first CDK telescope which is now the one they make now at Planewave! By the time Rick and his team built this one, he was attending UCLA and working at the telescope manufacturer Celestron. Rick and partners eventually bought this company and announced plans to build a flagship telescope and used the CDK design. This was followed by a 20-inch unit and a mount. They eventually sold Celestron to a Chinese company as they were prohibited from selling to another US company. Rick and several others stayed on staff but left overtime. A number of former Celestron staff now work here in Adrian for Rick at Planewave.
When Rick looked into making telescope mounts, he met a person in Deerfield who was doing this on his own. That’s how the connection was made. Kevin was looking for someone to sell his mounts so asked Rick who met him at a conference in New York. They then started to do business together and built a machine shop in Deerfield. This meant that Rick did not have to outsource the business.
The same year Kevin was hired, Planewave came out with a new mount at a price of $23,000.
Planewave now builds 1-meter telescopes that sell for $600k! They recently built a telescope for NASA that they installed in Maryland. Rick concluded his presentation by showing various photographs of stars, exoplanets and galaxies taken by their telescopes.