I'm not an engineer, I picked it up through osmosis. Upon his return from Australia and Southeast Asia in the early 1970s, Wood tried to retrofit old radar dishes into solar concentrators. However, that project failed, prompting him to design his own dish structure. Based on a modified geodesic dome, the structure is strong, lightweight and requires no adjustment after the mirrors are installed. That makes it ideal for set up in remote regions or the Third World.
Wood is also a savvy surplus scrounger.
Rather than spending huge sums on production tooling for graphite dies, he has dropped metal strapped to wood forms into Puget Sound and even 1,700 feet to the bottom of Crater Lake in Oregon. The intense pressure at those depths does all the work. The tank now lies submerged off Fox Island. Neither is he especially fond of the idea that his solar concentrator will be hooked up to a steam generator to produce electricity for space heaters and clothes dryers. The application of solar is as corrupted as its design.