King: Award Winner

Ed King Jr., founder of King Radio, received the Aircraft Electronics Association’s (AEA’s) Lifetime Achievement Award during the AEA convention and trade show, held recently in Palm Springs, Calif. Now retired, King began his career after graduating from Kansas State University. He launched a company, Communications Accessories Corp., which was sold to Collins in 1955. Four years later, he launched King Radio, developing radios for the personal aircraft market. The company started in a Kansas farmhouse and grew to employ 2,800 persons in an Olathe, Kan., facility before it was sold in 1985 to the Bendix division of AlliedSignal. Following the sale, King worked with family members to create King Estate Winery, Oregon’s largest winery, with 820 acres. Visit www.aea.net.

 

 

Ed King, Jr. was born in 1921, and was raised on his family's wheat farm near Dodge City Kansas.

In 1943, after graduating from Kansas State University with a degree in electrical engineering, he worked as a designer of Navy aircraft electronics throughout World War II.

In 1948, Mr. King started his first company manufacturing special components for aircraft and missiles. During the Korean Conflict that company grew to nearly 1,000 employees. It became the world's largest supplier of certain types of transformers.

He sold that company in 1958, and one year later started the King Radio Corporation.

King Radio designed, manufactured and marketed navigation, communication and identification equipment, including auto-pilots and radar for both civil and military aircraft. The corporation grew to be one of the world's foremost suppliers of electronics for private, corporate and commercial aircraft.

With six factories in the Kansas City area, Florida, and Singapore, the company employed 4,000 people. Mr. King sold King Radio to the Bendix Division of Allied Signal in 1985. A creative genius and true entrepreneur, Ed King, Jr. continues to hold many patents still valuable to the aircraft industry today.

Mr. King was an active pilot for forty years and flew his own jet until age 71. He is very proud to have assisted the Rutan Brothers in accomplishing their dream of circumnavigating the globe by airplane on one tank of fuel. Using King's products exclusively for navigation, flight control and communication, their Voyager aircraft flew around the globe on one tank of fuel in 1986. The King name is proudly emblazoned on the side of the Voyager which now hangs in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

Very active as Chairman of the Board of King Estate, Mr. King also serves as a Trustee of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and Director Emeritus on the boards of several corporations.

Extensive travels in France and Italy fueled Mr. King's interest in fine wine. His decision to develop King Estate, made in conjunction with his son, Ed, and other family members, was born out of his love for fine wine and great entrepreneurial challenges.

King Estate Winery was built to last through the generations and will be kept in the King family for years to come.