Future of Independent Aviation Media

Where the real parallel is between cockpit casual and greener grass we're both adventurers. We're both travelers and we're telling a travel story from the perspective of the mode of transportation , right ? But the difference is that we're coming from two very different perspectives. We're coming from a crew perspective because we have this unique ability to showcase what a crew does on large aircraft because we don't have an employer, you know, and you're really focused on the passenger experience. And I dabble in Pax . I do. I mean there are videos where playing iPhone recording . Usually complaining about something usually complaining you're not on guitar in a Q suite is what you're doing. You probably like the cynical version of Jeb . And you both need beards. You both kind of match. I feel kind of left out here. I shouldn't have grown a beard. We're a couple of gray hairs with beards, man. I mean, the similarities continue. I'm Steve Gardeno. I'm Bob Allen and this is Cockpit Casual The Podcast and I am live sort of live from Lexington , Kentucky right now. You're live at the moment . This is why I have a blank white wall behind me. You know , this is an unusual thing for us recording while it's still daylight outside . Yeah I'm in the Thursday basement . Yeah, it's still Thursday , our normal day for recording, but it's daylight. It's eleven twenty two AM and we're doing twelve hours early. Yeah . You won't have to stay up all night editing. Well, I still probably will because I got other crap I got to do today, but I thought you were going to be at the shore. I know, man. That's the plan. I was hoping to get there on Tuesday and here we are Thursday and I'm still sitting in my office. It just didn't, it wasn't in the cards. My plan is to head down there tonight. Avery's going to come out tomorrow . Yeah . That's what I will do in the summer . Yeah, well, you've had a lot going on in the last week or so . Yeah. So with airplanes and check rides and geez. Oh my god, I forgot about all that . So yeah, it's it been's been crazy couple weeks, which is why you haven't heard from us lately . Maybe here and there on the social media sites, but we have not published a pod . I have not worked on cockpit casual, it's been busy. The summers are always busy. And I gave you guys fair warning a couple months back. I said, you know, we've been really good with the weekly episodes, but once it comes summer, don't expect weekly. I do want to continue to do them as close to weekly as possible . We'll see how it all goes down, but I spend my summers down in South Jersey at the shore . You know, we live in like the Margate, Ventner , Longport area . And you know, we have a house down there. I like to go there and do nothing. And I bring my laptop. But I am going to bring my mic and my webcam and we'll do some of these . Bob, you spend your summers in Lexington. Yeah, I'm back in Lexington for the summer. Come here is where I'm originally from . I get out of the heat of Arizona by coming here. And same thing. It's just kind of it's laid back and but it's actually kind of nice getting back into the flow of the of this podcast. I know man. It's been it has been a busy couple weeks and I saw you this past weekend and I've over the years flown in and out of Lexington a lot as a pilot because it was one of our destinations when I flew for Allegiance, right? So I used to fly St. Pete, Lexington turns in the bus and in the MD eighty . But I've never really left the airport there. And I've been listening to you talking about how cool of a place it was and I didn't know what to expect and strangely enough in the twenty five plus years like we've known each other , I've only met a couple of members of your family. I got the full experience this weekend . Oh, yeah, you almost met them all. Pretty much all of them. And one of the one of the three of your siblings that weren't there . I know from our time in Denver . Yeah . And I got to put faces to names. I met your mom who was lovely and awesome. I mean, your mom, I love your mom, man. She's so cool . Yeah, she by the way , she was like, I can't believe how handsome he is in real life. Talking about you . I know. She told me to he's handsome on the videos, but oh my gosh, he's so handsome in real life. I do really well with the se venty plus set. I said you ought to see his dad Yeah . That's too funny. So yeah, this past weekend my wife Avery and I went down to Lexington, Kentucky for the weekend and we attended Bob's sixtieth birthday party, which was thrown by Lars o. Yep. Yeah. My wife was trying to throw me a surprise birthday party I was never in the cards. It was never going to happen with me . When she first When she first told Avery and I that it was going to be a surprise , I was like, that's not gonna happen. I'm like, look , if you do it, you can' youre guaranteeing that Bob's not going to be there it would be no surprise Bob's not showing up. Yeah, he's definitely going to be flying somewhere . There's no way the two of us can be in any one place without some planning. Yeah , yeah, but it was a success. It was it was a lot of fun. It was a great venue. The camel club, man, that place is cool. Yeah, the camel club in Lexington, Kentucky. Yeah, beautiful place. Yeah, just a great , I mean, great people from my past. I mean your flight instructor was the original flight instructor, Arlene McMahon . She was my flight instructor for a private instrument and commercial . And I female pilot taught Bob how to fly it should say a lot . Exactly. And that's why, you know , don't mess around with the female pilots. Don't, you know, don't talk, don't talk any crap because I know a damn good one. I mean, she was actually the FAA, like the national FAA flight instructor of the year at one time. Oh wow. Yeah, she's written books and man. Well known and , you know, in that in that area . I met her and her husband, Charlie there and we talked for probably forty five minutes, like just great stories on both sides. I mean, I was telling early early days stories. She was telling earlier days stor ies and just she was awesome man. Yeah , when I was seventeen or eighteen, seventeen, eighteen , they had a flight school and it was, you know, they had like ten or fifteen airplanes . They had rentals, school, you know, flight school instructors and all of that at Bluegrass Field in Lexington They had that business going and and I was the kid that, you know, was out there running around washing airplanes and, you know, moving airplanes, you know, just basically lived on the couch in that in that flight airport bomb. You were an airport. It was a total airport bomb. Yeah . And they came and said, hey, we're going to go sc uba diving in the Great Barrier Reef for a month . We're leaving town and we want you to run this place . We're going to turn it all over to you. You're the only one that knows anything about this . And they took off and flew to Australia and I mean there was no cell phones back then. I mean, it's difficult to even call and check in . They were gone for a month and I took over that business. I don't know. I was seventeen, eighteen. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing . It was a total mess by the time they got back but it was it was like my first experience of like running a real business. Not I had lots of side hustles and stuff like growing up, but I'd never like actually been involved in like a real actual business. And you had to like troubleshoot maintenance and stuff. I forgot. I remember you told me the story before and like you were saying that like one of the airplanes needed maintenance and you had to like source it. Oh yeah, yeah, one of the airplanes went down it was supp,osed to go on a week long trip. This guy that rented the airplane, he's like, you know, you better make sure my airplane's ready to go. You know, I've got, you know, all this, I've got this whole vacation planned around it. And I'm talking to the maintenance facility and they're like giving me these quotes of crazy prices and I'm just like and I know this guy's just like sticking it to me because he knows he can . And so I'm calling around trying to find quotes and stuff. I order parts and then, you know, then the guy won't like, he won't take my parts. He's like, No, I'm not putting these parts on. Guys just like screwing me over, man. It's a young bobby. Baby Bobby. Like I had to figure it out. And I did, you know? I mean I did. I mean, for the most part, but yeah, the books were a mess by the time they got back and little adventure this past weekend came on the on the heels of a double trip that I did with Pat Lewis. We moved in A three hundred and thirty from Phoenix to Madrid, then we hopped a flight to Abu Dhabi, then we moved in A three hundred twenty from Abu Dhabi to Kemball. Met up with Scottie Bateman there. That was my early summer trip. I'm hoping to remain on the ground for most of the rest of the summer. You did a couple demos, right? Yeah, yeah, you were yeah, you were a road warrior there for a week or so. Yeah, yeah, I had it pretty easy. I just did a couple dem , did an A three hundred and thirty demo out in Arizona, and then went out to New Iberia, Louisiana to a seven hundred fifty seven demo . So had it fairly easy. Yeah , comparatively. Yeah, it's your turn. Yeah . And then some rest after being after the sixtieth birthday. Oh my god, so do I after your sixtieth birthday I drank some booze man. I never do that didn't really sit well . But the other let's see my kids like so Nick started with FTI so he's up there in New York City working for an aircraft engine lessor . Tyler graduated. I think that happened before the last pod, but he is going so Tyler's twenty . He's going on july tenth to Florida to start his Airbus A three hundred twenty typewriting course . So cool. And he's been studying his butt off, man. Dude, he knows more about that airplane than me . Seriously. Yeah, he's into it. You know, I mean, he really is. He is I've never seen somebody so enthusiastic about flying and learning to do well down there. I can't wait to go fly with him. He's in the he's he's mid seventy two hour CBT right now and then we're doing ground schools a couple nights a week. And then I was fortunate enough to bring my good friend Chris Wilson , who was a spirit Sim instructor exam,iner down there for Spirit Airlines and fifteen years of it. I mean, he knows everything about that airplane inside and out. So Chris has joined us and done some Zoom ground school with the boys and they're just soaking it in. And then my youngest son last week two weeks after his seventeenth birthday got his private pilot's license in the Cherokee. So lots of accomplishments in our house over the last a whole lot dude our kids are growing up growing up . Me, on the other hand, not growing up and I'm a little I'm a little also annoyed they took down my spirit video made me take down my spirit video. Oh man, that is so annoying. Like of all places, Atlantic City, really ? Yeah, like seriously. And we'll talk about that more. I do want to talk about that a little bit. Let's talk about it in a little bit, but yeah, I we have a great guest today . Jeb Brooks joined us. We had a great hour long conversation with Jeb Brooks of YouTube video fame. He has a channel that has generated over a million subscribers and he does he documents the journey you know from the adventure and travel side of things and focuses on the travel experience much like we do, but from a different perspective. Yeah, it was cool talking to him . You know, from his perspective of not being a pilot from the from you, know being, a passenger and from that side of it. He was an interesting guy, just great conversations. We got to get him on a trip . Yeah , absolutely. Yeah. I want to introduce nomadic service. Let's let's see how our service stacks up against Qatar business class Q switches . Let's put them on a let's put them on a I don't know , it's a three hundred and twenty going apart out . Yeah , exactly So before we get into the spirit thing, I do want to talk about that before we switch over to Jeb. But last night I was scrolling Twitter, X or whatever the hell it's called. And I noticed a video which I thought was AI at first. I'm gonna play that video right now on the pod. So here we go And are we sure it's not AI ? Dude, it's not AI because all of the internet sleuths have got the ADS headlight ed ADSB data, the flight . So as you saw , a triple seven two hundred freighter in a Qatar Airlines livery did an extreme low pass at the Horseshoe Bay Airport in Texas . Now it didn't take off or land at said airport. In fact, that airport cannot support . I don't think that airport can support a triple seven. Six thousand feet long, but yeah, I don't know what I don't know if it has the weight bearing capacity for something or the taxiways or the runway with . I mean, certainly you could get a triple seven empty into a six thousand foot strip out . I don't know . But all that is irrelevant because it looks like a couple things you can notice from this video, okay ? The airplane was in a completely clean configuration. All right. So the gear was up , the flaps were up and the slats were retracted. So it was completely clean , meaning you know an empty, I mean, obviously the speeds are going to be based on weight and they probably didn't have a lot of fuel. They were probably very light. Those wings produced a ton of lift, but I mean, they were probably going close to two hundred knots. I mean, you can't get much slower than like one hundred eighty one ninety knots. Yeah, there's no thing without being in danger falling out of the sky, yeah . They got it down to what appears to be a radar altimeter of probably ten feet . Well , so I saw did I see an AD SB clip somebody put out and the airport elevation is like a thousand fifty six or something like that , but the ADSB was showing nine hundred and fifty feet . Yeah, I mean, it's ADSB, so I don't know, I don't want to Yeah, there's a margin of error there. I mean, you can look at it though and go that's probably ten feet maybe. I mean, they were low enough to wear if the landing gear was extended it would have touched, I think. You know , and and that's problematic enough , but the real issue occurs where they enter a right bank prior to climbing is insane. So somebody can probably figure out by the shadow and of where the shadow comes up of how many feet away how many feet off the ground that wing tip was and I mean it looks like just a couple feet. Yeah . I mean the the Jipwas was certainly screaming at them too low gear, too low flaps, too low gear, too low flaps. I mean, guaranteed. I mean, I'm sure they could silence it, but inhibit it, which isn't very wise . But here's the, it's the things that you don't think about. Like maybe you don't think about like how low your wings going to droop on the on the climb. Certainly that what I mean, I can't imagine anybody did the math there . The radar altimeter is not designed to hold an altitude above the ground in civilian aircraft. Okay? If you're talking like a B one , something that flies with like terrain managed GPS guided laser , like terrain following radar . We don't have that on these airplanes, okay? This is a simple sonar , like height above ground , archaic, I mean, it's accurate if it's calibrated, but it doesn't the reason that we have a radar altimeter is to identify minimums on an approach , you know, to identify where to start pulling the power back on a landing and those are typically like near the landing gear like near, the middle of the airplane. Yeah, it's not designed to be aircraft in a clean configuration above the ground. So that alone is an issue. Then you start talking about like the airport doesn't have the capacity. So what if some sort of engine failure? I mean, this is an airplane fresh out of conversion . What if there's an engine failure? What if there's some sort of malfunction ? Can you land there? Can you get it back out ? Do they have the appropriate, you know, fire fighting equipment at the airport . But now we're nitpicking. Let's talk about like the real basics. What if there was a lawnmower on the side of the runway? You know, how high is the wind sock? Is that pub lished anywhere? Like yeah, what if there was a maintenance shed? What if there was a guy on a bicycle? Like there are so many unknowns there and what happens if you touch the wing when you're passing at one hundred and eighty one hundred and ninety knots? I don't know. That's what I was wondering. You know, would it would it just scrape scrape that end off or would it cartwheel the airplane? I think it's going to cartwheel the airplane. I mean, think about it dig into to the dirt . You know, that GE ninety isn't very high off the ground to begin with. So does it pull that down? Does that engine now scrape against the ground? Does it bury itself like could have been an absolute disaster not only killing the flight crew but people and property on the ground. I hope that the FAA investigates this. And look, well not to mention that it would have probably destroy our entire industry the way we know it. That's where I was going. That's where I was going. This was an unregistered airplane being operated on behalf of the owner, lessor , probably prior to , you know going, to paint or coming from paint or going from bridge checks, something to where this airplane will eventually be delivered to the end user of Qatar Airways . Let me just reiterate that there's no way Qatar Airways had anything to do with except for the anger that they are probably feeling today , having that being , you know, very displayed prominently displayed on display doing something that reckless . Extremely reckless . So these are ferry pilots. You know, I don't know who, I don't know what company. I have my suspicions. I know the owners of the air. Yeah, we know we know who owns the airplane. We know who typically flies their airplanes and yep. And who knows? I mean, I'm not going to speculate on that stuff. I don't know who's flying . The only person that was responsible for this reckless behavior was the flight crew. And look , one incident can cook our entire . I mean it is there is a lot of honor system happening in Part ninety one aviation . And pretty much anybody that's type rated on an aircraft can go ferry an airplane with the right support. They can go out and organize fuel, they can go out and organize planning and permits. I mean, it's a lot to deal with. Like we've talked about this at length , you know , but it's not , you know , there's no barrier to entry as far as licensing at least on U. S. NREG aircraft. And I don't like that . In other countries , there is a process. There is some oversight in the US. There's very, very limited oversight . And that's worked, you know, because the people that do this, not just us, but other operators and providers operate with professionalism and with standards. And Nomadic operates using SOPs. We have manuals , you know, we have an SMS program . We have dispatchers and flight planners. We have briefings, we send performance documentation to the crews so that they are operating data with real data . And all it takes is one stupid hot doging incident to put the entire industry of frying aircraft under the microscope. Yeah, people thoroughly think we're we're a bunch of cow boys . I mean yeah and you know and sometimes you know even our videos kind of portray that a little bit like with the rest periods I mean we get some we do have a little bit of a bravado sometimes in terms of, you know , we're flying this long and a lot of that has been kind of for the for the video . Yeah. I mean, look, honestly, the reality is , you know , a lot of the times when we're showcasing really long hauls where it's just two of us , you know, we're stopping somewhere, but like that's not that hasn't always been the reality. And certainly when we, were in our twenties and early thirties , we did some really trips . And I like to kind of showcase that even if we're not doing it in the moment, you know? Well, I mean, you know , this is an adventurous type of a business. I mean, it is and and and that's why we love it. That's why we love the fact that there's not a lot of oversight and we have to use a lot of self discipline and we self regulate ourselves basically. I mean, there is part ninety one regulations, but it's pretty wide open . And we have learned over the years. I mean, twenty six years of doing this , we know what works and what doesn't, what's dangerous and, you know, there's definitely things that I wouldn't ever ever think about doing at this age that I was doing, you know, in my thirties. And I know what people are saying . Bob and Steve, I've seen you do a wing wave. I've seen you do a low pass. Yes, you have because there's a safe way to do that . I did one with Safair seven hundred thirty seven added a lot of Kunga after the first aircraft came out of maintenance there . You know, they were very proud of it. We had camera crew on the ground record it. I mean, it was it was awesome . I was at one hundred feet and I was on my takeoff runway and I had slats extend ed . We briefed it thoroughly . We took off. We climbed to one hundred feet, we retracted the gear, we picked up airspeed. We're doing about one hundred fifty, one hundred sixty knots , you know, take off power , but with slats extended, so we have a lot of margin of error on both sides of the speed tape . The airport analysis was done and we were at ten times the height . You know , at one hundred feet we had briefed it with the Ecuadorian military . Yes overseeing the whole thing. They were filming it. They were filming it . Same thing with same thing with the seven hundred forty seven out of India. Our crew did a wing wave. They did a wing wave climbing out of two hundred feet. I mean, you gotta use common sense here. You got to use basic airmanship. And there's no room for hot dog in this stuff, especially with wide bodies. My God, man , this just could have been a disaster for the leasing company, the ferry pilot industry at large, the leasing industry, the conversion industry, Qatar airlines , all and all for what? Like all for what? For a viral video ? I don't know. Yeah, it was not I don't like it was not smart . I'm sure somebody's regretting it at this moment. I hope so. I hope so and I'm not for wishing poorly on people like mistakes are made and thankfully that hurt hearing Yeah definitely but use your freakin head', man . Yeah . So that's all I got to say about that. And then before we go to our interview with Jeb , Spirit Airlines, man, the video . God Atlantic City. Why? Why? It's it's such a much loved video . So I apologize to everybody who is disappointed that that video is no longer viewable on YouTube. I do encourage anybody, any of our supporters to send an email to the Atlantic City Airport Authority. I don't know if it's going to do anything. You know, the airport manager there, I'm not going to talk negatively about anybody or anything here because look, they have a policy that there's no commercial filming without prior permission, which we requested kind of after learning about that. But keep in mind , we film at airports all over the world all the time. We have permission from the aircraft owners. There is no way to get a video of a large commercial aircraft without getting incidental footage of an airport in the background. Well how is this a commercial commercial film on it. It's YouTube is social media. I mean, I monetized it. It doesn't even pay for . Yeah, you're not making I'm making nothing. Let's be real. I might have made six thousand dollars on that video . Maybe maybe , right? I mean, that doesn't account for the hundreds of hours I put into like this . But does that constitute a commercial commercial a commercial video, a commercial film. That's the thing with the law, man. It's gray and it's open to interpretation. And we could definitely and may very well find out what that definition is if we this ends up in arbitration or court . As of right now, I made it private just because I want to think this through a little bit more . But I think there's a first amendment issue here. My videos are positive. These are documentaries . I ask permission of the owners of the aircraft. Whenever we do one of these videos, I get permission . If there are things that can't be shown, I blank them out . I do put a lot of care. I mean, this is not like yeah, it's a one man production, but at the end of the day I spend the time doing it. So I want to do things by the book. I get music licenses . I'm not about you know taking advantage of the situation. I want to showcase things. Yeah. I mean, it was positive for the airport. I don't know why they wouldn't want something like that . I don't know either . So I highly encourage anybody who supports supports the pod, supports the cockpit casual videos and us in general , you know, send a nice email , just question. Why? Why are you doing this? Like this is positive the industry. This is positive for you guys. I don't know why you're making a big deal of this. All help we can get is appreciated . I'd love to get this video back out there in the public sphere. I think it was a beautiful tribute to the to the people that that made up Spirit Airlines and you know, a nice documentation of something that nobody gets an insider's view of. This is the only that I know of real life video showing the return following the bankruptcy and closure of an airline of their aircraft assets. So I mean it's really a kind of a shame. I spent a lot of time and work and money and everything putting it together and now it's gone. And it's really freaking disappointing, man. Yeah , it really is. Well, let's see how it turns out. Let's see how it turns out. We'll take it to the Supreme Court . Okay, so with that said, let's go to our interview with Jeb Brooks. It was a great one. Hope you enjoy it. I don't know if we'll be back next week, maybe maybe the week after, but we're going to try to maintain it every other week while we're while, you know, through the course of the summer and then back in the fall when things go back to normal, we'll try to get back on a weekly schedule workload permitting. But thanks for your patience. Thanks for listening and enjoy the interview with Jeb Brooks . We'll see y'all All right, today on Cockpit Casual The Podcast, we have a very special guest that I've been waiting to interview for a long time. We finally made it happen. It is the great Jeb roo Bks. Welcome to the pod, Jeb. Thank you so much, Steve, and Bob. This is beyond exciting. I am such a huge fan of your work. So it is an honor to be able to participate today. I appreciate that man. We've been in talks behind the scenes for a couple of years now. I think in the early cockpit casual days, you reached out to me on the socials and hey, I love what you're doing. And I was like, oh man, like a real, a real YouTuber's reaching out . And we've teased the idea of having you do like a trip review on a ferry flight. And we got to do it. I mean, it's it's definitely going to happen. There's some challenges to overcome, but I think we'll find the right one about I am all over that. I will eat your Domino's pizza and whatever else you produce and I will I will give it a job score. Perfect. Excellent . I can already predict , you know, the luxury, the food, like that's, you know, I mean, you're roughing it. It's like camping . However , having an entire airplane cabin to yourself is also kind of kind of nice. That's gonna bode well for the for seat score. The question though guys on the service. How's the service ? Well , I mean it can be as good as you want because you are the cabinet attendant . You have full control of the galley. I can teach you how to use the ovens, but that's about it. And not well . If it has ovens, what are you talking about? It has them. Sometimes we heat our food in the on the top of the panel, like we let solar heating work plus windshield heat combination. I mean, actually, that's an interesting thing to discover if we do this. We'll heat a meal the old fashioned way and with the ovens and we'll see what tastes better. The nomadic way versus the traditional, I love it. Okay, nice . So if our listeners, viewers aren't familiar, which I highly doubt Jeb has a YouTube channel with over a million subscribers called Greener Greener Grass and he is a full time YouTuber . And actually it's quite different from what we do, but at the same time, it's it's it's not. There's a lot of parallels. And one of the things that that I've and I've thought about this a lot because I think that our styles are kind of similar in a lot of ways. The way we structure our videos, the way we talk, informative, but entertaining. But beyond that, where the real parallel is, I think, between cockpit casual greener grass is we're both adventurers, we're both travelers . And we're telling a travel story from the perspective of the mode of transportation , right? But the difference is that we're coming from two very different perspectives. We're coming from a crew perspective because we have this unique ability to showcase what a crew does on large aircraft because we don't have an employer, you know? And you're really focused on the passenger experience and I dabble in Pax . I do. I mean there are videos where iPhone recording usually complaining about something usually complaining you're not on Qatar in a Q suite is what you want. I like the cynical version of Jeb Rugs . And you both need beards. You both kind of match. I feel kind of left out here. I should have grown up beard. We're a couple of gray hairs with beards, man. I mean, the similarities continue. I got it quick aside. So we recently moved up to Washington DC for a lot of reasons but mostly just convenience and airports. And I went to get my driver's license. I filled out the form and I didn't even think about it. I wrote that my hair was brown and as soon as I went out, the lady just started laughing at me . I mean, I think I've got brown hair until I start editing a video and then I realize no both. I got brown hair on like thirty percent of my mustache. Right here Yeah, we have the same pattern too, man. You know, it's funny . I actually made the changes recently . I mean, I've been gray. I started going gray at age twenty six and it was a little bit on the sides and then it was a little bit on the top. And then before I knew it, you know, after I had kids and stuff, like that was like the real downfall. But I just recently my driver's license still says brown because I haven't renewed that in a million years. My pilot certificate in medical now says gray . Congratulations . And I'm old dozen . I'm Blairly a grownup. I'm older than both of you and I don't know, I got a little bit . Yeah, we just had your sixtieth birthday party this weekend. Bob, you're basically a senior citizen with brown hair and you look younger and better than younger than both of us without a doubt. It's the Eminems . It is the Eminems, I'm sure . All right, so Jeb, you did not start life as a broadcaster , certainly not as a YouTuber . You got into it in middle age, kind of like I did and kind of like Bob did. What like where like what it was young first of all did you, grow up in North Carolina? I did. Born and raised in Greensboro, North Carolina, which was a great place to grow up in a really cool sort of mid sized southern city. Not a lot of aviation though, when I was coming up , it's it's really changed. There's a lot going on in every where now. It's you have the Honda Jet factory ? That's right. Jet Zero's coming in . Is it Hakeo? Heco that's there with a big MRO? That's exactly right . So there's a lot going on at that airport , believe it or not. But yeah , so I was working in consulting for want of a better term. I could get into the technical details, but that's really the best way to put it, which had me traveling a lot. Now I had always loved airplanes, like so many kids. It's it's just such a it's a miracle. You're looking up at these things and seeing them fly. And I can remember I was at a conference in San Francisco out by the airport and I just it was a very boring conference . And so I stepped outside of this thing and this was probably Circa two thousand nine . And I was looking up in the United seven forty seven S were departing over the Pacific. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, I want to do that . And I didn't know what that was. Like I don't have the proclivity to be a pilot. have certainly taken flying lessons. I've soloed, I've done all of that. It's just not for me . I'm like so that planted that seed of I want to do that. And then fast forward a few years, I started watching YouTube and there were two or three guys who were making these videos about their trips. It sort of evolved out of the the forums where people would make trip reports and then it evolved into blogs and eventually they were there were Sam Chewy or Paul Lucas or Paul Stewart, Dennis Bunnock back in Circuit twenty sixteen. And so I stopped watching cable television. I cut the cord and just watched YouTube and these yeah , right it's the only sign of advanced technology use in my world and and so I was traveling a lot for this for this work , and I was starting to get kind of resentful because nobody had made a video about the Air France A three hundred and eighty . Like, why are these guys? Somebody needs to do this . And I end up having a project come up in Portugal and I found a pretty reasonable, relatively reasonable fare that took me from Dulles to Paris on the A three hundred eighty and in La Premiere in the original First Class . And I was like, I'm going to try this . And I remember I was so nervous. There's this side room for the first class passengers to like sip champagne and eat whatever . And I was the only person in this room but I was still, I was like hiding behind a chair, talking to my camera . And that was really, I would say that was really the start of it. It was it was just I was m aking content and I bet you feel the same way. I was making content that I felt like I wanted to see. It was a perspective that I was not seeing out there in the world. And I thought maybe I could try to do it in a unique way . And really it was kind of born out of that . Yeah . I mean , so your background is in like sales and consulting. Did I read that you're also a lawyer? Yeah, yeah. I like saying to a recover lawyer was so you're I mean so you're a guy who is comfortable talking . I mean, that's a big part of this for sure. Yeah, it is it yeah, I think that's a comfortable talking and have enough , I think there's a balance. Have enough ego to think, okay, what I have to say is maybe worth putting on the internet, but not so much ego that I'm not willing to like learn from my mistakes kind of thing. Right, yeah. Right. No, absolutely. There's totally a balance there. And that's been something that I mean, I've obviously experienced as well. It's funny, Bob not too long ago , Bob posted an Instagram video maybe seven or eight years ago and it was a dash eight, which Bob is not rated as PIC on. He has an SIC, like we trained him on it and he got his SIC. It's one of the few airplanes that I can fly that Bob doesn't . He came along for the ride. He was in the right seat and he, you know, he flew jet streams way, way way back like in that like just after the Wright brothers date and but other than that Bob, 's experience with turbine powered aircraft have been, you know, jets. Like he went right from there to like the seven hundred and twenty seven and DC nine and MD eleven and then everything else thereafter . So , you know, this was a throwback like to the very early days for Bob . And he I remember he was I wasn't making any content at this point in time at all . I didn't even have accounts. Like I didn't have an Instagram. I learned by watching him . I had Facebook, but I got off of it because it was just led to problems . I wasn't on Twitter. I was a lurker on Twitter . I just didn't I didn't have a social following or profile or anything like that . And Bob and I have joked for years like what we do is the story the book that can never be written, right? Like for any reason many of which are like we would either be jailed or stripped of our lic enses . So in the early days it was past the statute of limitation . We always have to add that disclaimer . But so anyway, the long the story that I'm getting at is so Bob posted this video and he was we're flying along in the dash eight and here's Steve and I'm just like leaning over and I'm like hi this is stupid. Like I said like nothing. It was clear that I was uncomfortable speaking on camer a and I was and that's one of the things when I decided to start making these videos , that was something that I had to really do a gut check and say, am I willing to talk to, do the voiceovers, but beyond that, to even be myself on camera . And I wasn't sure I had it in me, and it actually took a few videos to really get more comfortable with that. I wouldn't say I'm completely comfortable now. I was about to say, that's pretty impressive if you got comfortable after just a few videos . Right. I'm at three hundred and I'm still not. Yeah . Yeah. There's a lot that stays in the cutting room floor, believe me. Yeah. I think I have the I'm very fortunate in that I'm frequently approached by people who want to start doing this and it's it's always fun to chat with them about that that process because not only do you have to get comfortable but you start have to be comfortable talking into the void because for a long time nobody's watching right yeah yeah you got to not care for the feedback of likes or reviews or anything like that. It's just you're talking into oblivion and you got to be good with that. Yeah, it's that's an interesting thing actually. I never really thought about it that way. Like my evolution was I started making these one minute tours. So like I started Bob got me into Instagram like on a trip. We were down in South America. I remember I was like, What's Instagram? Post pictures online. So I started posting pictures and that didn't take off. It was like friends and family. I mean, I'd like to account with like ten follow. I mean, I had like my kids and my wife following me. So Instagram didn't take off for me, but I was a lurker on Twitter from like the, you know, like the first Trump election, like just watching the horror show unfold. And I didn't post anything . And but then I started seeing aviation stuff come up on my Twitter because I followed Australia. That was actually the first follow that I had another of my heroes. Yeah . Have you met Johnny? Yeah, John is a great friend now. Yeah, same, same. I mean, just an epic, epic intelligent guy just he's exactly what the aviation media industry needs and he was he was like he really I think built quite a foundation using Twitter Yeah. So I'm not surprised you that that was part of your foundation too. Yep. So it was him. It was Jason Rabinowitz Airline Flyer and Ian Pet Petchnick . So I'm watching those guys and then I and Scotty Bateman and I started just taking still photos on some of these ferry flights and like the ones that really got people's attention were like the empty cabins , right? So I'd post like a photo of like an empty triple seven or an empty seven three or like an all white livery airbus passing through Majoro and people were like, whoa, that's different . And so really quickly that exploded and it was like , I don't know, before too long, I had like eight to ten thousand followers and there were just people that were AVG . And then I kind of took it to the next level and I started doing these one minute tours like prior to flying the trip. And when I was doing that , the where this connects is that was my when I started feeling comfortable talking because I had this known audience. Like there were these AVGs that would ask me questions in the comments and I'd answer the quest ions and we'd get into debates . And so it wasn't like talking into the void for me. It was like talking to a group of friends . Yeah . Cool. That's really cool. And I think you brought that unique perspective that really almost nobody else could bring, you kind of accelerated through that time period in a way. Definitely. And so by the time it got to YouTube, like YouTube was for me, it was like the next it was the next logical progression because I had all these stories that I wanted to tell and I didn't want them to just be about the airplanes because the airplanes for me and I've said this time and again the a,irplanes for me are kind of incidental almost, which is weird and people almost get like a little like what? Like I didn't become a pilot because of airplanes. I became a pilot because of my desire to travel and see the world . I grew up completely isolated from that. Like we didn't have a lot of money and we didn't travel. We did road trips to Florida every now and then, G dideorgia ? I was by the time I graduated high school, I had been on an airplane like three times . Seriously. Yeah. Like I just was not exposed to it. Did you do a lot of traveling when you were when you were younger with your family? Some so I think part of this foundation for me it's a good question. So my father was traveling a lot as a kid. And so I got to take a couple of trips with him, not many. And that was always amazing because again, I grew up just fascinated by airplanes . And I think that you know Mike Downey . Okay, so Canadian guy , he's got a really great channel and does some really cool stuff that's kind of adjacent to what we do, not quite quite the overlap, but really cool guy. And he calls what we do. I love this word and I wish that I'd come up with it, but it's Mike Downey's Transportainment Where the Transportation is the conduit through which the storytelling comes . And so for us , I've always thought about it with , you know, we, as you mentioned, we're so kindly to mention, not only do we make videos about airplanes, but also trains and cruise ships. It's like the trip itself , even buses. The trip itself the best, but questions coming on that. There's a beginning, middle and end and it kind of it kind of supports the storyte lling. And I think that's a that's a fun part of what of what this world does . And I've said this before . What I love the most and this is going to tie in Steve to what you said earlier. What I love the most about what we do is there are very few things in the world that are like this. You walk into a door door . That door gets closed or in your case you close the door . You all do a bunch of stuff. I sit down and enjoy watching some movies and you know eating some food and doing whatever . And then that time passes , the same door opens up and you walk out into a completely different world . It's a freaking miracle. Yeah. It is. It's time for time travel and it's it's a wild experience. I think about that every time I fly. You know, half the time we're doing what you're doing, we're in the back flying around on commercial flights . Yeah And I love to hear Bob, you say that you think about that every time because there's so many people that watch our content and I imagine it's the same for you who don't for whatever reason get to travel as much as we do. And I think that miracle , I mean, I get goosebumps. I'm getting goosebumps right now, just talking about this because it's such, it's so amazing . I mean, someday maybe there'll be a little booth you can walk in , press a button and poof you're somewhere else. I hope not but exactly I hope not too we were talking about that we were in Japan last week and you know it takes you a little time to get over the I don't really fully believe in jet lag. We can get into that if you want to, but it's it's it takes a little time to get backgrounded where you are and and I think that's good. I think it's good to have that that earned recovery from like from literally time traveling around the planet. Yeah , right because it wasn't so long ago that a journey like that, if possible would take months and not hours and and things that people go through on that journey to get there , you know, I mean in some ways we're almost summoning that that vibe of , you know , the destination isn't necessarily the journey type vibe, right? And yes, it's shorter now , but that doesn't mean that it's not integral to the story . And that it's not fascinating. I mean, a lot more happened when when traversing the oceans , you know, in a in a steamship , I would assume than what happens if you sleep through a , you know, a twelve hour flight in a first class cabin. But that 's not to say that there aren't still stories to be told and things to be experiences to be collected and expressed from that process . I think I think along those same lines as you were talking about, Jeb , you know, we take it for granted that we can jump on these airplanes and fly all over the world and enjoy the service and talk about all of these things. But I've got I've got a large following on TikTok and most of those followers are non aviation people. They're people fascinated with travel and all of these places that we go . Because I've found that a lot of them are people that don't have the ability to travel for a variety of reasons. A lot of times it's health , sometimes it's money, sometimes it's the place that they live in in the world . They can't get a visa to travel . And so I get a lot of comments that, you know, you know, thank you for putting this out. I'm able to see the world through your eyes kind of a thing . And you know, and I don't take that for granted and that's why I keep, you know, putting content out there . Yeah, I think that's such a great point. I mean, you know, we get this a lot in in our world. I mean like sometimes people will observe I almost said criticize, but I'll say observe that I tend to be my meat maybe a little bit over ly positive about things that happen . But it's again talking about delicate balances. I mean, there are a lot of people who watch our stuff in the same boat who don't get the opportunity to do this. And you know, if I oh the champagne was room temperature What? Like really? I mean this is again back to what we're talking this is a it's a miracle that who cares about the champagne. We're getting to like transport ourselves around the world. It's it's so amazing inside of a technolog ical piece of art. I have to remind myself of that same thing every time like the Wi Fi won't connect and I'm throwing a temper tantrum in my seat . You know , I'm old enough to remember a time where there wasn't even YF I remember times before lie flat seating. I mean, you know, we were out doing this stuff back when business class was just a little bit of a w ider, you know, seat that reclined slightly further. I mean, and you could enjoy bomb . Yeah , well, I'm not that an old bum. Yeah, I'm not there either. You just got a line. That's the mark . I mean maybe on ferry flights, phone books were okay. Phone books were okay. Yep. Yeah. Sections we're not . So before I wanted I want to get into like the whole like the building of the channel and like that evolution and how that worked for you in a second. But I want to start by saying one of the other things that that really inspired me to start making the videos and putting them out there , I've always had this obsession with like creating some sort of a legacy . And yes, the legacy in like my family and my kids and passing on lessons and interests and all that stuff, but more specifically , what has built my inspiration on that is my grandfather was you know, it was a World War two Army Air Corps veteran, a B twenty five radio man . And oh, interesting. I wonder if we have a my grandfather was a B twenty five pilot. No way. He was captain. What theater ? He was in Aburma. Okay. Oh wow. So he was in the Pacific. Yeah. I wonder if so my grandfather started as a link trainer in instructor at Langley . So they they could have possibly met. I mean, there's no way we'll know now my grandmother passed away so he took just made an unbelievable document like record documentation of his time . He was in North Africa, Italy, Corsica, he was in like that theater, right? Like they and he was also on the was also on the B twenty six the Marauder for a period of time . I think their unit changed aircraft at one point, but I have I am the one who is in possession of all of his photo albums, citations , documents from that period. And it's fascinating to me. And I'm always like, man, I'm so and we also interviewed him, my brother and I before he passed and we got a lot of stories like ones where he broke down in tears like you know our unit was bombed and only eight of us survived like while they were in the deserts on these makeshift desert runways in North in Algeria . And so like, I was always like, man, he has he's created this record, this document of documents and photos and all that. And I'm like, we live in an age right now where we can document things almost like reality, high definition video , audio . We can tell these stories. We have the tools to tell these stories and they will last forever, indefinitely. And for generations people can tune in or, you know , plug into their electrodes in their brain in the future and experience what we're experiencing. And for me, the ability to create that legacy was always a huge driver. Is that something that you feel in the videos that you're making? The right answer is yes , but the true answer is not really . So for me, it was really it started as I want to make content that I'm not seeing out there because I want to see it. It was honestly a selfish motivation, really . And then over time it's turned into I don't want to forget these amazing experiences . And so what I think is so cool about is social media gets such a bad rap for many valid reasons . But I think the other piece of it that sometimes gets lost in that conversation is you can find community when there's stuff that you don't have like real life friends you're into. And I think about myself growing up in Greensboro, North Carolina, there was not a lot of aviation, but that was what I loved . And so you're able to find people who share that passion . And so it's not so much legacy . It was sort of like a path for me. It was I want to see something and then there's been this community that's come around with us who has the same enthusiasm and that's been a fulfilling a surprising experience. I didn't I never intended to do that. It was really never about building an audience. This is going to sound strange and I don't and I think that a lot of people who look at YouTubers or creators would not really believe me. I don't know that I would believe me, but it's true for me. I've never focused on the numbers. It's never been about subscribers or views or anything like that . I don't have time to do that. It's about like putting out the next piece of content, editing, editing the content. I think to keep up with this , I'm going off on a little tangent, but it's relevant . You have to have a couple of things for you. You have to have a passion or enthusiasm about the content you're making . I couldn't make content about shoes , for example, but there are people out there who do because they love shoes . I think you learned this quickly both of you, I think . And I think you do this better than a lot of people out there, which is being authentic. I think both of you are just who you are . And I think that's important because if you want to stick up or stick with it, you can't fake your personality. You see people who skyrocket and then and then just fall out of the thing because they're not being themselves and you can't keep up that for years . And the third thing is you got to love the work that goes around it . And that's the part that is not seen. I often talk about with newer creators. Remember when you're in school and you had to do math or in your case, Bob , arithmetic advocacy . The teacher would say show your work , show your work. And the thing about what we do and I feel like you do you all do less of this than I do is I hide the work . You don't see the hours of editing, you don't see the when things go wrong and we have to find a way around it and like when we're tired and you know really, I don't want to frickin have the meal because the flight left at ten o'clock, it was supposed to leave at seven o'clock. I want to go to bed , but I got to stay up and film the meal and I don't get to show that work . So I think all of that is kind of the third thing. And I'm very fortunate and Steve, I think you're the same way particularly is I just love the editing . Yes. Like I would and I was talking to somebody the other day was like he works with a lot of creators and he said I'm the first creator he's come across who actually loves the editing. The reason I do it okay is because Susan and I love to travel . Suzanne loves to plan travel and really complex trips and coming up with really crazy itineraries and then I love the edit ing. So actually the filming of it is a necessary evil to get the other things to work. So all that being said, what has back to your original question ? It's really been for me kind of the perfect storm of what I enjoy, which is a passion for, you know, travel and transportation , a personality that just happens to work with the community that we've happened to come across and then an enthusiasm for the work behind the scenes that doesn't get necessarily seen . Right. I think that's what's motivated me to keep up with it a little more than maybe legacy. But there's definitely there's a legacy component to it because you're putting it out in the world. Well, absolutely. And that's that's maybe you haven't thought about it so much, but that's a side benefit because imagine if we were able to watch one of your blogs from like flying a constellation across, you know, yeah because at some point Air Travel as we know it will be as archaic as that is right and so we're documenting that in a way that's never been possible throughout throughout time, right? And that's the period of time that we're in. And we are first generation in that time. And I think that we have a responsibility to do it well because there's plenty of people that are doing it that are not that are not doing it well. And I think more people should be doing it in whatever it is for them and documenting it well because we live in this time you, know, it's like the printing press, but in three D, you know what I mean? It's it's we live in a time where we have the technology and almost any and anyone can afford it. I mean, you don't need much. I mean, you really dollar one hundred. This is all we use. I don't have anything other than the phone. That was part of my next line of questioning, actually . I want to jump back slightly on what you just said. And yes the editing is a big piece of it for me. I grew up as a musician in a musical household . And when I committed my life to aviation , I pulled the rip cord on creativity because there's no room for creativity in flying airplanes. There's just not . And it's it's one of those things that has always been a void, an emptiness in my life. And what I used prior to making these videos to fill that void was simply listening to music . I have a vast catalog. So does Bob . We both love music of all genres, really . And you know, listening to music allowed me to kind of absorb like to fill that void. But when I started editing, I started editing with music in the background because I'm one of those people that when I watch a movie, I pay attention to the soundtrack. I feel and we did this on the episode with my father, like I let the music guide my emotions and I wanted to apply that to air travel to a,viation to my perspective in aviation, because when I'm flying, I often have airpods in and I'm listening quietly to music because it's such a huge part of my life. And so stringing them together, editing video with dialogue, telling the story and mixing that with music is very much an artistic release for me . And it's something that I enjoy doing. And like you said , I want people who know to understand what goes into it, but I don't want people to see the entire process because it's dirty and it's messy . And if you see the whole process, it's less interesting, I think. Like the story is the final product. I don't know what this says about me because I hate editing . Yeah, I think it's I think it says more about us than it does you. I think you're the normal guy. Yeah . No, well, I mean it takes both kinds because look , my videos without Bob on screen , I mean aren't the same and Bob Bob being him and Bob and his personality and you know the way he interacts throughout a trip with the environment and with the aircraft and with the situations. And with me , I think is like a very, very big part of the story. Yeah. And it's a yin and yin kind of a relationship in a lot of ways. I cut most of the shit that I say, you know, because it sounds stupid. And I can leave all the stupid stuff in for me because that's part of it, man. That's great. Mads people love it. Maybe Bob, now you're seeing why you need to like editing hey, it seems to work. I'm not going to mess with it. Yeah, we got a good. We got a good thing going. So talking into the nuts and bolts, I already see we're going long on this and that's fine. Into the nuts and bolts of the of the channel . So I do everything . And one thing I will say is I hate the filming part of it. Like if there's anything about it that I don't like, it's dealing with cameras and audio gear. It's heavy , it's complicated I long for the day that you know that I could do everything I want to do with an iPhone. I can't mainly because I have to fly the airplane . You know what I mean? There is a good bit of iPhone video in my in my stuff, but for me , you know, capturing the images and the sounds is a huge challenge. And I've and technology evolves and it's certainly gotten easier. I mean, I'm not, you know, what we can do with what we have technologically now is is amazing . But to get the visuals and the sound that I want, I I've had to upgrade to like serious lenses, serious camera bodies , serious editing technology , audio editing technology, you know, Isotope RX eleven has been like, I mean, I feel like I have like a bachelor 's degree on it right now, but I really need a PhD . It's a harsh environment. It's such a harsh environment. You almost have to, you know, with the sound and a lot of times with the lenses. So like that technical stuff, I don't like. It's it's hard and you need experts to operate that stuff and like our business simply doesn't allow us the opportunity to bring experts into the mix . So as far as on the capture side , so I got to do it myself and that's been a learning curve. But the editing I like the storytelling I like, you know, the experience and the final product I like , you do it all too, right? I mean yeah,, yeah, you and I are the same guy in that world. I was I was walking around the I don't know if you've seen the reflecting pool that's been in the news lately here in Washington. Yeah . So we wanted to go down and look at it and we were walking around it. Suzanne and me. And this woman came up and said, Hey, would you like to talk to us about your thoughts on the reflecting pool? And it was CBS and I'm like, yes, I see a camera I'm in . And so I said, whatever I said, and they whatever. It was a nice little interview. And that was a fun surprise. And it was on there and I've gotten comments on videos I didn't expect to see you on CBS News. That was pretty good. But anyway, the point is , this was like this little hit piece, like nothing to it. And there were three people. They had the producer, the interviewer, the camera operator and the sound guy . I'm like as we walked away, Suzanne, can you imagine if we had that much support and like how great that would be? I mean to do this job, okay, and especially to publish withed consistency as we all do . Like you're doing so many playing so many roles that in any other production would be, I don't know, dozens of people . And I think that's part of the fun because when something goes wrong , all you can look at is a mirror. Yeah . And it really it kind of gives you a little bit more pe p in your step. I'm with you though . Filming is painful. And for a long time, I, well, not for a long time. For a while , I felt the same way. And to be fair, your recording environment is way more challenging than mine . But I had a couple cameras and different things to do different angles. And I was like, I got to simplify this . And so now it's just an iPhone and some DJI camera microphones because the cabins are pretty loud ambiently . Not as bad as a as a cockpit or to be out on the on the ramp, I'm sure . Yeah . Those are really on more envirments. They're a little more insulated . The runway like the micking of stuff is very difficult for me. And I do use loavs . I use the DJI stuff for a while. I switch to the road stuff because mainly because they are also capturing on their own , like they're recording as well. And so I can actually go in and take whatever audio sounds best and sync it and all that stuff. But yeah, the audio is a huge challenge, but for me, the bigger challenge is light . Like the cockpit is is bizarrely unique in that it's extremely bright and it's extremely dark at the same time and depending what angle you're at, you're trying to balance that very dark and that very light . What I think is really though important is I believe that audiences appreciate a level of go back to a word I used earlier, authenticity. So if it's too polished , like I remember we decided we wanted to start including maps to kind of show where we're going. And I found a guy on Fiverr who could make our maps for us and they're really polished looking maps . And we got some pretty negative feedback about it. People thought it was like, where's the authenticity? You've got these great maps now. I mean, I'm just trying to like up the game. So I think there's this it's like people don't want you to get too good. Yeah. Well, there's a fine line. It's true. I mean, I've gotten I've gotten negative feedback because I started eliminating a lot of the noise like when I walk around an airplane, the APU outside is very loud. I'm yelling usually and I found a way to eliminate, you know, a lot of that noise and people are like, Why did you cut all the noise out? We want to know what it's like actually walking around the outside of an airplane. Is like, Is it that quiet? Did you find a way to make it that quiet now? Is this airplane quieter than another one of them . So I had to go back to just like basically making it raw I try to make this better for you and you don't like it. Yeah , I had to overcome. So I announced that I was switching to FX three's and GoPros and stabiliz ed images. And I announced that because I had some of this footage that I just was in love with and I said the next round are going to be like the new style, right? And it was I was shocked like the vast major ity of people were like, no, don't change a thing, don't change a thing . And like as a filmmaker, like I want I want to make it better. I always want to make it better. I look at the last video I did every single time I make a video and I'm like, I hate this, this and this about it. I'm going to do it differently on the next one. But I do think once I introduced it, people were more receptive to it. They do complain though about the music. A lot of people complain about the music drowning out the cockpit chatter. No, the music the music is part is a huge part of it. Look, I think it's a push and pull because on the one hand you think about like, you know, most real ity television shows or like I think about HGTV shows like where they're renovating a house. Every single episode is the same. If you had twenty televisions playing next to each other and each one is showing a different episode. They're shot for shot the same thing. Yeah . And people like that because they get used to it and it's comforting. But as a creator , I don't want to make the same thing every time. And so that's been an interesting journey for us too because it's added to the complexity of what we mean we were talking about this yesterday . Suzanne said, remember that I made a video about a flight from Seattle to Boise and Horizon Dash eight . I mean, now we're flying across the Atlantic four times an economy to show the difference. A part of that is the there are more people making these videos on YouTube. So you have to bring some creativity to what you're producing . Yeah . But an even bigger part of it is I like to keep it interesting as a as a creator as you know as somebody who's making content. I want to make it engaged . Right . But you also have to respect the audience and the fact that they don't want you to be that crazy. Like I would love to make a huge , you know, I think about like the stuff you do that's these massive documentary style pieces. Like I would love to do that, but the audience like that takes it takes time to transition to that. It does, it does. And the difference between you and me there is I don't give a shit . I'm just gonna feed it for feed it to them and if they like it great and if they don't, they can roast me in the comments. I mean , but again, I'm not making a living doing it. So like there's a big difference and you have sponsors and like, you know, the fact that we do things so loosey, goosey and, you know, our way or the highway is, I mean, I'm not saying that's where I want to stay forever, but I like that freedom right now because I can give I can give them what I want to give them and I kind of use that to test different things like that last spirit documentary that we did that went viral . That was the by far and we're going to talk about that in a second, but that was by far the most successful video I've ever done. It took me four days start to finish . And look, I text to you as soon as I watch ed that thing. I'm not too proud to admit, I'm in tears. I'm sitting there weeping. Everybody was watching this thing. It is a work of art. Thank you, man. I appreciate that. But like that's I'm always kind of trying to test what works. And I want to try different things because it keeps me mentally engaged. The reality is, even on a ferry flight where every trip is a little bit different , the overall trip is always pretty much the same, right? Like, I mean, it's the same, like I can only talk about a walk around so many times and have it not be, you know, repetitive. I can only talk about eating the same catering so many times. And we go to the same cities a lot of the time, right? Every time we transit the Atlantic and a narrow body, we're in kef. Every time we transit the Pacific, we're in Hawaii and Majoro and Guam. I mean, so there's we're anchororage going nth. There 's not a lot of variety built in there. So I have to kind of find the variety on each episode or create the variety on each episode. That's such a guy I know that yes, I know this feeling so well and it's it's for me it's like I find myself, I don't want to say it's another sturdy tray table. I say it's this is a sturdy tray I'm not going to do it this time. I'm not going to do it and as I'm sitting down to start editing it's it's like it's almost demotivating if it's the same thing. I it's so interesting to hear you say that because it's exactly the same thing for me just in a different way . We got to do one together man. Let's do it. Like we got to do it. We got it 's all about scheduling, but we got to make it happen. It is. And the other added thing is like most of the time we fly on an SFP, so it's like restricted to licensed crew members only , but we do fly on standards, foreign standards, and then of course , we have to clear it with the client and there's just so many different things involved, but the stars will align. We did it with Ostra once get on . I think that's going to be awesome and And and we'll we'll bring your wife along as well. Yes. Well she's a critical element. Well, that's what I was. So you know, in terms of of filming , I was curious to know , are you both filming off of your own separate phones and then you come in and edit it with both of that footage . Yeah, so it's interesting. The way we think about it is she's kind of the high level editor because she drives like where we go. I mean, we work on it together, but she's driving like the strategy of what we're making and all that and then the order in which we're doing things and how stuff comes out . When it comes to filming , the sort of A camera, I would say , is me , and then she's got what I would say the B camera. So she's getting other angles and that kind of thing . And this is, you know, we put it together and into one final piece. Is she part of the editing process? Yeah for sure. She's so it's interesting she's I met her like after right after that first video and so she's been she's as much of an aviation enthusiast as we are , maybe a little bit more excited about airports than airplanes . She's a transportation engineer , master's degree in aviation planning and just amazing amazing wow, amazing expertise and a real enthusiasm for this stuff. So yeah, she's been a part of the entire process basically since day one. The edit ing, I do I do the first pass, then we come in, she watches it, gives me a first round of edits make those. Then we go sitting side by side , finishing making a final cut. Man, that is that what an awesome resource. That's something that we do not share I wish I had someone else to bounce to bounce it off of. I don't know. It must also create some interesting dynamics in the house. It does not I'm not going down this road now it really does two things Well what it is it's a real it's it has created or ensured real positive communication and give given us a really good foundation there, which I think is important in any relationship . But it also has I'm such a maybe artist or creative thinker. Like you, my previous career really took out the creativity this. And is this is just absolutely blossomed for me with this . And I would make all kinds of mistakes if it weren't for her. She's an engineer, so she sees the details. And so the story flow is tighter . Yeah, videos videos, the , yeah, are much better with her expertise . I can imagine. My kids and my wife are kind of my test audience for a lot of things. So when I make a video , one thing that people kind of probably don't know is I don't make it like continuous, right? Like I'll edit parts. I mean, I start usually from the beginning , but then I remember something as I'm going through footage, I'm like, oh, I have this idea and like I'll work something. So I usually it's usually a combination. Like each kind of break, each scene break is kind of a something that I've worked on separately . And sometimes I've done things where I'm like, this is gold, I love this. I love this and my kids or my wife are watching it and they're like, this is terrible . Or sometimes, you know, and so I use that feedback. And sometimes I just tell them, No, I don't care. I like it. I'm keeping it in. And they were right, you know, usually when you're watching something over and over and over again, your brain eventually processes it far differently than someone who watches who's watching it for the first time. Yeah , and you're seeing it raw before the edits, before any corrections or anything like that. So well the other thing is tough, you know what's coming. They've got no clue. Right , right. That's true, right? And sometimes I to have be like, no, no, no, this makes more sense if you've seen this other thing first . But I didn't and nobody else will have either. So when you guys are, you know, on board filming or taking pictures and stuff, do you ever get any anything back from the flight crews to for, you know, privacy and things like that. We we have never had that happen Touch Wood and I think two things there are two main reasons. First of all , we're pretty sensitive to crew when the crew's out. We don't film the crew, we don't film other passengers. Secondarily, if we accidentally do, we tend to blur their faces or whatever. They don't know that at the time. And then the other thing I think is because we're just using an iPhone , like it 's not it doesn't grab a lot of attention. Yeah , I think I think that's it. Well, maybe with when you're together , they just figure you're taking, you know, pictures of each other , videos of each other or whatever, you know, it's not like out there like, you know, by myself taking pictures of , when we're walking in airports, Bob, I don't know if you've noticed this, but I don't use camera gear in air ports ever. Every thing that's in an airport like terminal area, in like the secured area is always done with a phone because I don't want to call attention to baseline process. Yeah. You know, walking through the streets of India, I'll I'll go to the next level, which is usually a GoPro because I don't want to get robbed and I also don't want to lug that stuff around . So generally , you know, I'll use a GoPro for that. But sometimes I'll like in Tosh Kent, I took out like I had the FX three out . Sometimes I'll do it, but mostly the real good gear is reserved for controlled situations. The spontaneous stuff is always either phone or gopro for that reason . You know, it's less conspicuous . So this actually dovetails nicely to the one of the reasons that we're even here today to doing this . And Jeb reached out when I made the announcement that I had to take down the Spirit video and it got me to thinking and this has been well, let me let me back up a little bit. So I made the spirit video without much of a plan. It was like I had the idea once we were in the mix and then like I kind of like raced to get footage and I went and flew one of the trips to get footage and then I met another trip leaving to get footage and then I squashed it all together. We talked about it on the pod and I turned it into a video. So there wasn't a whole lot of planning involved, but whenever we do a video, I do ask my clients. It's also part of our contract with our clients . Like they are either accepting that their that their airplane and certain elements of the trip are usable in social media or will expressly ask perm ission and get permission from the aircraft owner. I've never had to really think about locations before . And I've never thought about it because we've done, I mean, we're not nearly at ten percent of what you've got. I think I've got like twenty five videos or something , but those videos have touched almost fifty airports and I've filmed inside of them, and I've filmed in the ramps, and I've and I've talked about them and I rarely go negative , but you know, I don't even think twice about it. I mean, I'm filming because I have the right to be there. I'm badged, I have access . I wouldn't call them. I think they're kind of documentaries. Like, so I think that we're starting to touch upon some first amendment stuff , but I've never thought, oh, well, we're going to be filming at this airport. So I need to talk to the airport authority because I want to avoid that bureaucracy . Long story short, make the spirit video, million and a half views in like less in just a couple weeks . Just great comments. Everybody loves it. Got all kinds of media attention . And then I get a cease and desist from the Atlantic City International Airport saying that I must either edit out all of the anything obtained in Atlantic City which was sprinkled throughout the video. Critical pieces to the story . I mean because that was one of two places I filmed really and you know either do that or take the entire video down or they're going to go after me for damages and like all this ridiculous stuff because there's some statute that the New Jersey Transportation Authority requires that we get written permission from the airport manager to do any commercial filming at their airport on airport grounds. So I received the cease and desist . I reached out to our lawyer. She says we have a great case. I mean, we'll get into the specifics of that later, but ultimately , we submitted a request to retroactively receive permission, citing that it was positive. The video was painted the airport in a positive light . It's a public interest. It's arguably non commercial . I mean, you know, I ain't making any money on YouTube. I'll tell you that much . And they came back and said, No, take it down you have until the eighteenth of june . So at eleven fifty nine on the seventeenth of June, I made it private. And right now, it is still private. It essentially does not exist in the public sphere whatsoever . But it's not gone and I'm definitely definitely weighing my options as far as do I want to fight this ? Do I want to challenge them to a fight and see what happens ? What are the upside? What are the downs ide? I think at the end of the day, the downside is going to be monetary. But you know , this really, look, we've talked about this before. YouTube is TV now. That is where we're going. The networks are struggling, the streamers are struggling. The future of broadcast media is either YouTube or a YouTube like platform. It just is. And everyone across the media space will tell you that, everyone . That means that there are going to be independent creators out there providing documentaries, making entertaining films . This stuff is only going to get bigger and bigger, and that's going to present some real challenges to overcome. And I know that you've had a similar experience I did. Yeah , I think you're right. I think the at end of the day , content is not about the creator or even what the content is. It's about the audience it attracts . And what's really interesting about YouTube and platforms like YouTube or the short form stuff like TikT ok or whatever, whatever it is content becomes successful if there's an audience with whom it resonates . And , meaning small content creators can make content that a broadcast platform cannot. I think back to that CBS news interview at the Reflecting Pool. If you got three people who've got to go around like you can't just make a documentary about the spirit moment in four days. Like just it's just not possible. So I think your premise is correct . I think that there are two kinds of airports . I think there are airports that are run by business minded, marketing focused kinds of people , maybe even engineers . And then there are airports that are run by lawyers . Yeah . And that's right . Yeah. Yeah. And and unfortunately , it turns out that Atlantic City is run by lawyers . And lawyers as a recovering lawyer, I can tell you are fear based and it's all about risk management and what can they do to cut the risk ? I don't know what the damages are they would claim you created. Like what is what are they going to recover ? And it's just silly. So yeah, we had a similar experience. Mine was a little different though . I got invited to and some of this is on me. Okay, it's on me. I'm happy to take the accountability. I got invited up to Cincinnati to make a video behind the scenes there . And I asked the guy who invited me, okay, this is great. So we've got permission to film like we can do whatever. And he's like, yeah, it's all good. And I got there. It was his day off And that was a little strange . And then he takes me up onto a triple seven that's being loaded up with cargo, takes me into the cockpit and like I'm like, this is strange. The crew was on board and they thought it was strange. I'm like, I'm not filming anything in here. I don't know who these people are. You don't work for these people. This is so I'm like, okay, well the airfield is probably okay. So we made, you know, made this content. It was the first episode in a series that I've since kind of like cultivated called Airports Revealed, where we go behind the scenes highlighting the operations and the people that make airports work because there's so many unsung heroes as you guys know better than most. And we put this video together. I'm super excited about it. I'm like, this is the this is the future. Airports revealed, nobody's doing it. This is going to be like the thing . And publish the video and find similar success, you know, not to the extent of spirit, but like it was it was a good video. And then I got an email from the airport saying you need to take this down because you didn't have permission to do any of this. And I freaked out . Like it threw it just definitely threw me for a loop . I'm like, and so I didn't do what you did. You made the smart move and this is what I told you. You marked it private. I just deleted it. Yeah . So I lost all those views . Yeah. And thankfully we were able to work through it. Like their issues were some of them more valid, some of them were silly, but they were they were legitimate concerns. They're a private semi private. That's debatable, but you know, property and so they it's their it's their property. So I needed to match their their requirements, you know, but yeah, it is frustrating and I think what gets lost in that bureaucratic focus is like what we're making is positive . Yeah. And I get it. Their concern, and again, this is a way lawyers are either wired up or are trained to be is not the positive content that you or I are making, but the risk that some nefarious character sees the video and then decides to go make their own and they do something bad . Right? But that's a different risk than this positive video you made about a really important moment sure for a lot of people . Yeah . And on ours in our defense , I mean , any footage of the airport itself was incidental to the fact I mean you can't film a large commercial aircraft without filming incidental footage of an airport. It's just not humanly possible. I mean we're not going to pull the airplane out to the street . You know, yeah , you know, we've and we've we've had, you know, as I said, we've we've had , although that would be good content if you did . It would be it would be but no, we've made a number of these other videos and it's been interesting to see who I mean, a lot of airports have reached out to us proactively saying, hey, come and make a video about our airport because we see the value in this. I think a lot of airports are struggling , you know, either for to get their own employees or for their their their tenants to get employees because it's a difficult environment to work in. Yeah. So this is an opportunity to highlight like what how important these and how cool these these spaces are . And and I think those kinds of airports are they just have it easier. I just I think like I said, two kinds of airport s in the world. Yeah , yeah. I mean, my strategy has always been, I pull out the cameras , I film. If somebody doesn't like it, I put the cameras away. You know what I mean? Yeah . And in this one, like we had the clients the client wanted the video made. They liked it. They were a fan of the show. In fact, that's this how this particular client even found out about us was from the videos. It was a client we had never worked with before. They were like, it would be awesome if you did a video using our aircraft. And I said, Well, we happen to be doing a video about spirit. And so yeah, I'll use this footage. I was I was just it was awesome. And here's the other thing that's crazy. I mean, Atlantic City is like my stopping ground s, man. I live forty minutes from there. Like this is happening and they are struggling to find tenants airlines. Like they are not in a good place with the demise of spirit and I focused on I doubt they even watched it, but I focused on the video the airport ops guy, the guy in the pickup truck that was our escort . I mean, I was planning just to film on the airplane. And then I was planning to drive to the outerer perimet to film the takeoff. He goes, No, man, jump in the pickup truck. Let's go to the edge of the runway. I'm like, hell yeah, let's do it, you know ? And you know, at the end of the day, I don't know who he answers to . That's not my problem. Like he was in a position of authority to me and he granted us the access to do it for whatever reason, whether that was right or wrong . That's not for me to decide. But I just took them up on that. So that's where it's just really and again this is documenting something . It's a documentary. We're not promoting anything , you know, we're documenting. This is public interest . Yeah, I think I mean, you know, all those are legal questions that if you decide to pursue you would eventually find answers to. Yeah . But I agree with you. It's it's to me is the wrong word, but it's it's the spirit of the thing, man. Yeah. This is one of the reasons I just I got out of law. It's like throw me a bone, like step back from this and just use some common sense. Like this is a good frickin thing . Yeah . Yep . No, I totally, I totally agree. And we'll see where this goes . I think that there are lessons to be learned from all parties involved in this . I do believe that we will I will find a way to get that back and available at some point . I hope it's definitely a piece that I that I've done that I'm very proud of and I'd love to continue to showcase it. I think it came out well . So it's unfortunate , but you know , again the good news is a million plus people seen it. I have seen it . I've seen it. But I want it to be part of the record going forward. Well that goes back to your focus on legacy. Yeah , and because of that North Star, that drive, I know you'll make it happen. I hope so , man. And I appreciate it. Well, Jeb, we've gone over an hour here. I mean, man, it was awesome. It was enlightening. We got to have you back, but more so , we got to do that collab video, man. I 'm going to be awesome. I got it. it Let.'s do Let's focus on doing it. It's up to us to let you know when there is something pending that might be doable . All right, well, it's been awesome. So glad you were able to join us. Let's do it again. Let's stay in touch. . For sure It's great to see you guys. Thank you so much for the conversation between now and the next time, seeing the sky. All right. Sounds good, Jeff, thank you. See you. Bye bye