"Jeb Burnside" Avstry #16

Jeb Burnside from the UCAP Podcast. Tells us about his time in working in Congress, his time as Executive at Avweb and Editor and Editor-In-Chief at Avweb and Aviation Safety and some reflections about UCAP.


http://www.avstry.com/shownotes.jsp?id=16


Transcript


J.R. Warmkessel: I think I've told you this is as long or short as you want. It's really much like what you guys do is very topical. This intentionally is not. This is sort of to get the deep back story. Who you are.


Jeb Burnside: If it's all about me, it's going to be a pretty short episode.


J.R. Warmkessel: I doubt it. I think you're an interesting guy and I think you.


Jeb Burnside: We'll see.


J.R. Warmkessel: We'll see. We'll see. So why don't we start by I always like to ask people tell me about their pilot's license, certificates. That kind of thing. So why don't you start there.


Jeb Burnside: Let's see. I have a commercial, single and multi-engine land, single engine C, instrument rated, and I have an advanced ground instructor ticket.


J.R. Warmkessel: Alright. Well Jeb, thank you so much for being with us today. It's a real honor to talk to. I'm going to classify you as a fellow podcaster.


Jeb Burnside: Okay. Yeah. That's right.


J.R. Warmkessel: I think you're much more than that actually.


Jeb Burnside: Well depends on which convenience store I'm just walking out of, but.


J.R. Warmkessel: Well so take me back to the beginning. Where did you learn to fly? Why did you learn to fly? Give me the back story.


Jeb Burnside: Well it's fairly, fairly easy. When I was growing up, my father had learned to fly and my earliest recollection he had already had his license and he had a VFR only commercial for some reason. I don't know why. This was dating myself here a little bit, but this was the early 60s and he had gotten a bug, if you will, from a close family friend of his who had moved to Anchorage, Alaska, and apparently learned to fly. Bought into an airplane partnership. I think it was a Taylorcraft and he used it, it was on wheels, to go hunting and fishing in the summer time up there. Dad had gotten, had had, the hunting bug for a long time before I came along and he started making trips to Alaska in the summer time to do the hunting and fishing thing and saw the utility of the aircraft and however just even if it was just quote unquote a Taylorcraft. One thing led to another and he got his pilot's license and over the years up until the time he died actually he tried to get to Alaska every summer. Some summers he didn't make it. Some years, he went twice.


J.R. Warmkessel: It's always been my dream to fly by airplane to Alaska. I have never quite done it yet and I keep looking at the milage and go wow. It's a long way.


Jeb Burnside: Yeah. It's a hike. It's a hike and it's something I would certainly want to do also. I've not flown in the Pacific Northwest. I was just kind of looking at that earlier today coincidentally. Never really flown myself in the upper Midwest or the Pacific Northwest. I've flown in Alaska, but not flown to or from Alaska.


J.R. Warmkessel: Now I do know a little something about your father and I know that he served in the military. Can you tell us about that?


Jeb Burnside: What little I know. He was just out of high school or a senior in high school, something like that, on Pearl Harbor Day and enlisted along with a lot of other young men in that era. He enlisted in the Marine Corp and before the smoke cleared, he had served a year on Guadalcanal as an armorer for a dive bomber squadron, a Marine dive bomber squadron.


J.R. Warmkessel: Now what's an armorer?


Jeb Burnside: Takes care of the weapons. Takes of the guns, cleans the guns, loads the guns, sights the guns, loads the ammunition belts. Things like this. I'm sure also loads bombs and other ordnance on the airplane.


J.R. Warmkessel: So he would have been ground support?


Jeb Burnside: He was ground support, exactly.


J.R. Warmkessel: You said you got your license in the 60s.


Jeb Burnside: I got my license. Actually I got my private in 74.


J.R. Warmkessel: So tell me about that.


Jeb Burnside: Growing up of course I'd been exposed to airplanes through my dad's activity and I basically just thought that was about the coolest thing a human being could do. Especially with your pants on and it was, I don't know, kind of assumed that when I was old enough I would get to learn how to fly. It was just one of those things. My high school graduation gift from my parent's was flying lessons.


J.R. Warmkessel: That's a fantastic gift.


Jeb Burnside: It's a fantastic gift and I don't know that they could have picked anything that changed my life or has been as valuable to me over the years as that single thing.


J.R. Warmkessel: Now where were you living at the time?


Jeb Burnside: I was living in a small town in South Georgia called Tifton.


J.R. Warmkessel: So tell me about those first flights. What were you flying? What were you in?


Jeb Burnside: It was a 150. At the time, this was 73. Doing this through the local Civil Air Patrol squadron, which was a very well equipped squadron at the time. I believe it was just a senior squadron because I don't remember any cadets or anything like that, but we had a 150, a Cherokee 140, and a 182.


J.R. Warmkessel: That's a pretty well-equipped squadron.


Jeb Burnside: It's a very well equipped squadron for a town of maybe 10 thousand people.


J.R. Warmkessel: In the middle of the United States.


Jeb Burnside: Yeah. Basically, you're going to love this. I got the 150 for 3 dollars and 25 cents an hour dry and 80 octane fuel was .479 a gallon. So that's how I could afford to learn how to fly.


J.R. Warmkessel: So this serve as a warning to all the people who say, "I'm going to do it next year." That maybe this is the cheapest year it's ever going to happen.


Jeb Burnside: It ain't going to get cheaper.


J.R. Warmkessel: Yeah. That's long been my opinion as well. So you got your license. Then where did you go from there?


Jeb Burnside: I got my ticket. Let's see. I was a freshman in college. I got the private ticket. Didn't really do a whole lot of flying because the high graduation gift only included three private. So after that, I was kind of on my own to buy flying time but I kind of kept my hand in when I was in college and took a couple of flights every now and then. Sometimes I'd just go, "Hey. Let me go get a flight review or let me go get some dual and get snappy on a new airplane or something like that." By that time, I graduated to 172s. I had a little bit of aero-time. I had time on the Cherokee. The CAP squadron when I was still living in Tifton, had somehow divested itself of those three particular airplanes in exchange for a 172 and every now and then, especially on the holidays. Holiday weekends and things like that, they had some gig with the state patrol where they would supply an airplane and a pilot to fly up and down the interstate and look for problems. Now I had and am in fact flew several of these missions. I'd swing by the state patrol headquarters and grab some kind of walky-talky thing that I'd didn't have a clue how to use and I'd go fly up the interstate at 80-90 knots for 30 minutes. Turn around and fly back past home plate and go another 30 minutes and turn right back around and go land. Turn the radio in and go home and have dinner. It was a great way to build flying time. Although I didn't do that much of it.


J.R. Warmkessel: When you left college, you kind of sounds to me like you chose a career in aviation.


Jeb Burnside: Well I did and I didn't. I got out of college and moved to Washington, D.C., and was working for my home town Congressman at the time. He's in the economies forte down in that district was agriculture. So there wasn't a whole lot of policy activity in aviation, but over the years I did make some contacts and got to know a few people and one thing led to another. Kind of started to do some policy work. Mainly political kinds of things using aviation as a backdrop. One thing led to another, changed jobs, changed Congressmen, and I ended up working for one who was on the aviation sub-committee. Mostly by accident as opposed to design and he interacted a little bit with the sub-committee staff. That was not my area of responsibility for that particular member, but I got to know some of the people over there. Moving right along, one thing led to another and I ended up with what was then the National Business Aircraft Association. Now the Business Air Aviation Association.


J.R. Warmkessel: When about was this?


Jeb Burnside: This was mid-83 I want to think and that's when it got hot and heavy as far as getting into aviation policy.


J.R. Warmkessel: So anything that you worked on that would effect us today or that was really memorable that you'd like to share with our listeners?


Jeb Burnside: It goes back a long way. That time frame was the early years of implementation of the first major consolidated aviation bill which was enacted in 82. That was bill that J. Lynn Helms asked for that pushed through a bunch of infrastructure and FAA technology developments. Five year funding bill, aviation fuel taxes in the mix, yadda yadda yadda. Worked on a lot of the implementation of that. Working to try to get up some of the airport funding numbers. Perhaps less so on the facilities and equipment side of the FAA budget. Worked with customs. Worked with the IRS a lot on various regulatory proposals. I remember I think I singlehandedly saved Loran-C one year.