Ausflug 34

Oshkosh by Gosh

July 06

Day 1: The Fun Starts.

Leaving again Sunday morning, we completed the last leg of our journey to Oshkosh using the scenic Route 83 from Waterford to Route 41, a fast, limited-access four lane road leading straight to Oshkosh, There we drove in to "Camp Scholler", a set of open fields with scattered groups of Porta Potties sandwiched between Whittman Field to the East and Route 41 to the West. A lot of folks with airplanes, of course, fly in to the airport, park in the grass areas around the runways, and put up tents under the wings. I did that back in 1986 (see "The Long Way to Oshkosh"), but this time I was off with the other common herd of campers in the "Back 40", as we nicknamed it. We put up the tent and despite the heat I managed to take a nap while Monika explored the campground. She found a 1/2 price store that sold mementos of previous fly-ins, and returned with a hat and a T-shirt from the 2004 season. I'm a sucker for bargains, so we wandered back there to pick up a hat for me, two insulated glasses for drinks, and even a "Wilbur and Orville Wright" doll set! Maybe with the doll set I will finally figure out if the bald one was Wilbur or Orville, an issue that 99.99999% of the world's population could not care less about!

Sunday night we had our first thunderstorm, which was kind of a baptism by fire for our new tent (to mix a metaphor). It only leaked in a couple of places and didn't collapse due to the wind gusts except for one corner, so physically we judged the tent to be a success. Besides, it was saving us from a minimum of $170 per night that the local hotels wanted to charge, so even if it was difficult to sleep in the heat and humidity, economically we judged it to be a bargain. The next morning the convention began in earnest.

The EAA "Airventure" fly-in mixes several components that appeal to very different types of people. The focal point is aircraft ranging from antique airplanes and warbirds to more exotic aircraft such as helicopters, homebuilts, ultralights, and my particular interest this year, Light Sport Aircraft (LSA). However, there are also airshow extravaganzas every afternoon from about 3 to 6 p.m. that feature different flying acts or routines every 15-20 minutes. Four large hangars and many large tent pavilions as well as the more ragtag "fly-market" offer a huge variety of aviation-related goods ranging from complete aircraft to various bits and pieces and services ranging from flight training to painting, engine overhauls and suchlike. Finally, there was an area of permanent pavilions that offered seminars on a wide variety of topics from 8:30 to 5:30 every day.

Thus the fly-in is a combination of an aviation convention + a gazillion airplanes + airshow extravaganzas. It seemed that the visitors fell into three distinct groups. The first group was the "lookers", the single day visitors that gawked at all the airplanes and watched the 3-hour airshow and then went home. The second group was the "shoppers", the 2-3 day visitors who were seriously inspecting different types of airplanes and buying things at either the flymarket (like a flea market but with aviation junk) or at the vendors in fancy pavilions selling aircraft and all kinds of parts like engines, propellers, heaters, etc., or at the sales booths in the 4 huge hangers in the center of the field that featured flight training organizations, electronic gear, flying vacations, headsets, tools, etc. The final group was the "aviation enthusiasts" ("nuts"?), the visitors who typically spent 4-7 days at the fly-in. The enthusiasts attended the aviation seminar forums being presented in about 15 hangars converted to open-sided pavilions. The forums ranged from "How to weld, rivet, cover wings, bend aluminum..." to Burt Rutan talking about the future of commercial space flight or the FAA guys talking about regulations, accident statistics and other fascinating topics, such as the LSA aircraft, maintenance, and pilot regulations.

In fact my first step Monday morning was to wander among the LSA aircraft a bit and then walk over to the FAA pavilion for "Sport Pilot Update From the FAA" which detailed the pilot requirements, followed by "Light Sport Aircraft Certification and Maintenance", which gave me information on the new classification of simple, 2-place aircraft that could be flown by Sport Pilots such as myself.

From 2:30 to 3:45 we attended a seminar on the "Basics of Mountain Flying" that gave me potentially invaluable information for making, say, a flight to Alaska, and we rounded off the afternoon with "Fokker E.III and D.VII Stability and Control". Despite the rather esoteric nature of the latter seminar, it was well attended by geeks like me who really want to know and understand how to fly the extraordinary variety of aircraft that have been developed over the years. For those who might be curious, my take away lesson for that seminar was that I would have a decent chance of flying the relatively stable and controllable Fokker D.VII, but might jolly well kill myself trying to fly something as unstable and hard to control as the Fokker E.III. The Walter Mitty in me suggested that it might be useful information if I'm ever caught in a time warp back to WWI and find myself behind German lines with a choice of aircraft to try to fly back to Allied Territory. Not, admittedly, a very likely scenario but you never know.

We watched the airshow while having supper at the Aces Cafe, and then wandered over to the Beach Boys concert in back of the Ford Pavilion. There we used the miracle of cell phones to hook up with Lloyd (see Wanderung 11) and Don who had flown up that morning from Illinois. We listened for a while to the music of our youth, but I can only take so much swimming in nostalgia and finally we headed back to camp, where we rested a bit and then drove Lloyd back to his campsite behind the wing of his Cessna 421. There we rejoined Don and Neil, Lee, and their two girls, who stopped by to visit. Around nine they were grilling some steak and bratwurst for dinner and we returned to our campsite for the night.

Copyright 2008 by Robert W. Holt and Elsbeth Monika Holt
Prolog
Prolog
Day1: The Fun starts Day2: Airplanes Everywhere Day3: Seminars Day4: Ultralights and a Raptor
Epilog
Epilog

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