Vern Raburn On Flying, Innovation, And Absent Friends

Introduction: Aero-News has been interviewing top CEOs -- the movers and shakers in the aviation world -- all year. But we've been slowish about getting the interviews out to you, the readers. We're sorry about that and have chained Hognose to his keyboard until they're all here.

[The beatings will continue until morale improves -- E-I-C]

We've already done an in-depth interview with Cessna's Jack Pelton, asking him questions nobody ever asked him before. In Florida this Spring, we got a hold of some other fascinating executives and, once again, went beyond their boardroom lives right into the cockpit with them. One of our interviewees was Vern Raburn of Eclipse Aviation.

This is the first part of a three-part interview with Vern.

Vern Raburn was on a high, a pilot's high, having just flown across most of the southern USA to introduce a plane for which he has been conceptualizer, designer, promoter, enabler and impresario [and don't forget "Chief Evangelist" -- E-I-C]. He flew the chase plane; he helped push the first Eclipse Jet to venture out in public back into its display stand with his own hands. His Galatea unveiled, the sculptor steps back and is a bit overwhelmed by the adulation of the public.

Raburn: I hope it will last!

Aero-News: I reckon.

Aero-News: It's been interesting, as Zoom's got me talking to CEOs --

Raburn: Uh-huh, he told me that this morning. Is he still banned from here?
(Sun-n-Fun)

Aero-News: Yeah. he's still totally persona non grata.

Raburn: I figured as much.

Aero-News: All you need to do, you want to get John Burton angry, just mention his name -- and vice versa.

Raburn (grinning): I almost started to. You know, John's so happy we're here, I started to ask, "why don't you let Jim in?" Oh, well!

Aero-News: It might help Jim, or it might get you banned, I dunno. (laughter)

Raburn: I don't know which of us'd be angrier! (more laughter)

Aero-News: But they let me in, so it can't extend that far...

...well, I've had a good time talking about these guys, especially because, it's good to talk about where we are and where we're going as an industry, but I also love talking about... the roots. And I think our readers know Vern Raburn the Great Entrepreneur behind Eclipse Aviation, Founder of Microsoft, Fortune from before Microsoft, they know these things. What they don't know about is, Vern Raburn the aviator.

Raburn (sounding intrigued): The aviator...

Aero-News: So, how long have you been interested in aviation, and what got you interested?

Raburn: (looking at the top of the tent): Ohhhh, gosh! Six or seven years old. My dad was Chief Engineer at Douglas Aircraft in Tulsa. Before he was transferred out to Santa Monica. And he ended up... he worked his whole career at Douglas, McDonnell Douglas and Boeing. Three months after Sputnik went up, he started to work on the space program. He spent the rest of his career on space, and ended up running the Delta missile program.

Aero-News: So it was normal to have Dad come home and talk about orbit or what-have-you...

Raburn: Plus, I grew up in Oklahoma. And Oklahoma is just one of those places where airplanes are just part of the daily life, because -- particularly back in those days, before interstate highway system, etc., etc., you know, that's how a lot of people traveled, was by light airplane. And I had three things going for me, besides my Dad. One is
-- because he used to go to Santa Monica regularly from Tulsa.

Aero-News: Now, was he a pilot?

Raburn: No, never was a pilot, never was a pilot. He *wanted* to become one, a lot. But with the costs of raising a family, and having a responsible job, he never had the time or the opportunity, but we used to take him to the airport and go to pick him up at the airport a lot.

Now, this was in the days of the Connies, the DC-6s (right) and 7s, the Martins and the Convairs.  And you know, to a seven-year-old boy... those airplanes were pretty damn impressive.

[Raburn has a faraway look]

Of course, that was in the days when you'd stand by a fence that was only this high [indicates chest level], and there's nobody, no security, no TSA.

Aero-News: You could walk out and say goodbye... under the stairs.

Raburn: Absolutely! So that whole thing was very impressive. Second, my uncle owned a wheat farm. And I started working on that when I was about seven. And I'd use to get on a tractor about six in the morning, and plow all day long. And... some people get inspiration from the ocean, and some people get inspiration from the mountains. Well, I sort of grew up on the Plains, where the only thing you got inspiration from was the sky! (Laughs). And so I kind of fell in love with the sky when I was a kid.

Aero-News: So you'd be driving the tractor and watching a contrail go by?

Raburn: Absolutely! [laughing with pleasure at the memory] And the thunderstorms build up, and the clouds -- cause you know, you start off in the morning and it's nice and clear. And by noon, all these little puppies, and by three, these monster clouds... when you're driving three miles an hour up and down a field all day long, you don't have much else to watch!

And then, I finally got to start flying when I was about... hmmm.. the first actual flight I had was on a DC-3, going from Tulsa to western Oklahoma. And that was just about the best... because my folks used to let me go by myself. And I was an independent [kid]... so that was the best thing that could happen to me, as far as I was concerned. So I just grew up around airplanes, although not like an airplane family per se.

And I kind of fell in love with airplanes at seven, eight years old. Joined the Civil Air Patrol and got to fly in a Piper Cub.

Aero-News: So you were a Civil Air Patrol cadet?

Raburn: Yeah, yeah.

Aero-News: How far did you go in the CAP?

Raburn: Oh, I think I got to Lieutenant or something like that.

Aero-News: You stayed in for a couple of years, then?

Raburn: Yeah, for about five years. Went to some of the summer encampments.
Like at Sheppard Air Force Base, and did all that kind of stuff.

Aero-News: Get to see the base museum, and all the exciting airplanes?

Raburn: Absolutely. This was the coolest part: I got to fly to Sheppard on an Air Guard C-124. You know, big double-decker with 4360s, the Globemaster I.

Aero-News: Sure, that's..."Everybody upstairs, downstairs. Everybody downstairs, outside." That was the jump drill on that.

Raburn: Exactly! Exactly! Exactly! And all these stuff, these big monster engines, it was really impressive.

Aero-News: It's still impressive when they bring those machines out. They've got a DC-4 out here.

Raburn: Absolutely. Yeah, I know Tim Chopp, the guy that owns that.  [Aero-News
note: Tim is the founder of the Berlin Airlift Historical Foundation, which operates the Spirit of Freedom C-54]

Aero-News: There's a fellow in Maine that's got three Connies.

Raburn: Maurice!

Aero-News: You know Maurice (Roundy).

Raburn: Of course, I know Maurice.

Aero-News: I suppose he's put the touch on you for money.

Raburn: Maurice tried to get me to get his airplanes airworthy. Because we owned a Connie until about two months ago. It's actually in Korea now. The crew just delivered it to Seoul... Saturday.

Aero-News: Right, I think we ran a story on that.

Raburn: You did.

Aero-News (relieved): Good.

Raburn: The day it left Antelope Valley, where we'd had it based for... gosh!... fourteen years or so.

Aero-News: Geez, it's gotta be hard to pay for that.

Raburn: That's why we sold it.

Aero-News: And the human knowledge, in the maintenance of those complicated systems.... much more complicated than a modern jet...

Raburn: It's a phenomenal amount of tribal knowledge. It takes a phenomenal amount of, just, lore, to really make those airplanes run right. And you know, we had some young guys that were really picking it up, but the real problem is -- I was interviewed on something, I think it was Discovery Channel, about it, two years ago or something like that -- somebody asked me a question, "What will cause these airplanes to not fly any more? Parts?" Well, it turns out, parts are the least of the problems. particularly on the engines. You know, those engines used to break so much, they had gazillions of spare parts!

Aero-News (laughing): Warehouses of 'em!

Raburn: ...and they were bought for pennies on the dollar, and...

Aero-News: Didn't they call it the "parts recovery turbine," the pressure recovery turbine, because so many parts would wind up in it...

Raburn: PRT, [correcting] the Power Recovery Turbine, yeah. But I had always said parts were not going to be the problem, it was going to be fuel. And I always thought it was because we were going to lose the leaded fuel. Even though, that particular airplane we could run with the low-lead fuel, on a reduced power schedule.

But the real killer has been, it's not the lack of leaded fuel, it's what the price has become. Because we really supported the airplane with the airshow circuit, and because... you know, even leaned, even running 40% power, we'd burn 300 gallons an hour.

Aero-News: You have no choice. You've got all those cylinders...

Raburn: And so it used to be that we could go to airshows, and we'd take most of our fee in fuel. And that's really how we kept the airplane running. We paid for the overhead, the crews and stuff like that, with the t-shirt and merchandise sales and some other stuff. But now that fuel has more than doubled, in some cases tripled, in price, the airshows just can't afford this any more.

The airshow business has changed so much since 9/11, that it's actually pretty depressing. And so we finally said, "we've done this for a decade and a half, it's been a great honor. I'm glad we were able to preserve the airplane, I'm glad we've been able to share it with literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people, but you know, all things come to an end."

Raburn: So... I kind of fell in love with airplanes at a really early age, got my pilot's license when I was seventeen.

Aero-News: What did you first fly? What did you learn to fly in?

Raburn: A 150. Cessna 150.

Aero-News: I've been kind of taking a poll as we go along.

Raburn: And it had a Narco Omnigator in it. With whistle-stop tuning. And I actually -- my instructor said -- I learned to fly in Southern California, at Torrance Airport.

Aero-News: When there were still orange groves?

Raburn: There were a lot of orange groves! Absolutely! And... I am old!
[Laughter]

And my instructor and I, as is so often the case, got to be great friends --  and right after I got my license, he said, "I know you're not working on your instrument rating yet, but I want to show you something," and we took a 172 and went out to Barstow, out on the other side of the mountains. And we flew the very last A-N range. The Low Frequency Range.

Aero-News: Oh yeah, the four beams...

Raburn: Di-dah, dah-dit. Flew the beam, as they used to say. And I think about a year after I did that they decommissioned it. It was the last low frequency radio range in the nation. So I got to say, I flew that.

Aero-News: Well, that's bragging rights, for sure.

Raburn [laughing]: Absolutely!

Aero-News: From the low-frequency radio range to the high-speed, low-drag Eclipse...

Raburn: Exactly, it's got GPS, you name it...

Aero-News: So, do you still fly for recreation, or do you strictly fly for business these days?

Raburn: I don't fly as much for recreation as I used to. Most of the flying I do these days -- actually, in the last couple of years, it's been all for business. I fly about, oh, probably, 300 hours a year. That's 99.9% business. I fly a lot of the chase missions for this airplane. But I mostly just fly on business, going places.

I've still got a T-6. But I haven't flown it... [long pause] ... almost three years now. I don't even like to go out to the hangar and look at it, it looks so forlorn. It misses me so much.

Aero-News: Oh, dear.

Raburn: But I'll never sell that airplane. I'll get it running and licensed again in another year or so. And I'll get flying again.

Aero-News: It's just sitting right now, I imagine, because you must just be the most busy man...

Raburn: Because I have zero time. I have no life! (laughs). But it's OK. It's for a good cause.

Aero-News: It's to change the world, I suppose.

Raburn: We think we're gonna have a little impact on changing it.

Aero-News: What do you fly these days when you're flying on business?

Raburn: I've got a Turbo Commander. A 690B. For its time, it was a great airplane. Still is a great airplane. It's still one of the nicest *pilot* aircraft I've ever flown. It's very, very easy to fly; it's just a wonderful instrument platform. Super stable, super speed stable.
But it's like most of these airplane. My airplane is, I think, three serial numbers from the last 690B that was built. Which means it's only 26 years old. So it's a brand new airplane.

Aero-News: Well, I grew up through the seventies, and in my mind 1978 is still pretty new. I remember when the 152 was a new concept.

Raburn: Absolutely.

Aero-News: And so I look at the 152s on our flight line, and I'm not thinking, "these things have 17,000 hours and ought to go to the knackers."

Raburn: You know, I remember when it was no big deal to find a three or four-hundred hour airplane. That was two years old.

Aero-News: And if a plane had 2500 hours on it, that's high time. You wouldn't touch it.

Raburn: Oh no, you don't touch that, it's got all kinds of problems. Now 2,500 hours on a Baron, on almost anything out there today, you go, "Whoah, this is a low time airplane."

And we have this coming -- we really have an airworthiness crisis that's starting to happen in the GA fleet.

Aero-News: A reckoning. And the T-34s are the storm petrels of the storm that's coming.

Raburn: It's not just the T-34s! It's the 414, and the Commander, and the Bonanza, and everything. These airplanes were never -- the thing that people don't get is that --

Aero-News: Aluminum can only bend so many times before it lets go.

Raburn: Absolutely correct, but it's worse than that. Ninety-five percent of the GA fleet that's out there today is not a FAR 23 certification.
It's a CAR 3D certification. In other words, it's World War Two standards. And things like fatigue analysis, and damage tolerance analysis, simply were not done as part of certification.

Aero-News: Life limits on parts. No life limits on parts in CAR 3.

Raburn: Not done. No, none, zero.

Nobody really expected to have this fleet last fifty years, which, well, we've got a lot of fifty-year-old airplanes out there. Someone told me the other day that ninety-five percent of the airplanes ever built are still flying. When you think about that, that's...

Aero-News: That doesn't seem possible with the wartime production

Raburn: Not counting war.

Aero-News: But.. civil planes... he might have a point there.

Raburn: I think he's close!

Aero-News: There's always planes being restored.

Raburn: And you look at that, and you say, "Wow." Because we look at that, and we build, say, sixteen million cars a year, we scrap about fourteen million. I can't even find scrap numbers on aircraft. If you go to the FAA and try to do deregistrations,

Aero-News: They don't keep track of it!

Raburn: They don't keep track of it.

Aero-News: I did the thing when you first discover the FAA database and you go to find all your old N numbers. Did you ever go through that?

Raburn (Laughing): Yeah, absolutely.

Aero-News: And an aircraft that I knew for a fact had been destroyed, was still on there registered to a guy that I knew was dead.

Raburn: They don't deregister aircraft very much. Back in the days when they used to pay a tax on an N number, people were more diligent about deregistering aircraft.

Aero-News: Imagine that.

Raburn: Yeah, exactly. They had an incentive to. Today it's like, "Who cares, man?" And so, it's really hard to truly tell [exact numbers], but I think that everybody would agree with me that we probably have eighty percent of the aircraft ever built still flying on the register.

Civilian aircraft, anyway.

I betcha... I probably would be willing to bet that eighty percent were still ... in existence, whether they're fully licensed and current, ah that may be another [question]. Cause there sure are a lot of Aeroncas, Cubs, and Stinsons, you know, you name it, somebody saying, "One of these days..."

Aero-News: "... I'll restore it, someday."

Raburn: (Laughs till he coughs)

Aero-News: "I won't sell it to you cause I'm gonna restore it some day."

Raburn: (strangled laughing sounds)

FMI: www.eclipseaviation.com