In the previous blog post, I had written about our arriving in Oshkosh for the 72nd annual Airventure Show. In this post, I will attempt to provide some insight about the show and our experiences during the full week of the show from Monday July 21 through Sunday July 27. I’ll preface it by saying that we are not at all “into” planes or aviation. We aren’t ex-military or pilots so our take on things will be quite different than a commercial pilot or owner of an airplane that comes in for the show for their umpteenth time. We have both flown on commercial flights, mostly for work, and I have even gone up on a single engine Cessna with a friend from work to take pictures of our old property in western New York. But I hope to explain that even with our lack of “passion” for planes, the experience of attending this show has been one of the best stops in our nine plus years of travel. It’s right up there with the Albuquerque Balloon Festival and the Winter Blast Pyrotechnics Show in Lake Havasu.
My normal writing style for this blog is to work through in chronological order since at a typical weeklong stop, we would likely alternate between a hike, bike ride or some sort of tour with each thing being quite different. But since this stop is concentrated to just the air show, it makes more sense to break the writing into individual groupings based on specific aspects of the show. It really doesn’t matter which day we did which thing. Nearly all of the categories are available throughout the week or at least a few times during the week. As an attendee, especially a first time attendee, the real trick is to try to figure out what you want to see and then come up with a strategy to fit in those activities during the course of your stay. My first bit of advice is to recognize that it is impossible to see everything. To some degree, the fact that we don’t own a plane and aren’t pilots, allows us to eliminate a great deal of activities from a lack of knowledge or interest. There is still a ton of stuff to see and do.
The bigger dilemma for me in writing up this blog was how to deal with the large number of still photos and videos I took during the week. In the 7 days of the show, I took 2945 still photos and over 4 hours of video. My first pass of grading the photos allowed me to eliminate 75% of them but that still left over 700 photos I liked. I will intersperse some of the photos in this blog that help to explain a topic as well as a few of my favorite photos I took. But I have also created two videos of our time at AirVenture. One video is simply a series of favorite photos from the different parts of the show and another video dedicated to the two night shows with incredible fireworks and laser light display and some amazing drone shows.
Slideshow of Even More Photos from Oshkosh
Video of the Night Show
ATTENDING THE SHOW LOGISTICS To camp at the Airventure Show, you need to be a member of the EAA - Experimental Aircraft Association. This is the organization that runs the show and facilities. Obviously it wasn’t something that we were members of but it was easy to deal with on site. Since we had not reserved a spot in advance, all we needed to do was show up at the entrance station and go in to sign one of us up with EAA for a year ($48) and then pay for the number of nights we planned on camping there.
The rate for dry camping was $39 a day which sounds expensive for what you get, but if you were to get a motel or other accommodations and drive in each day, the parking charge is $25 so what we paid seemed more reasonable. Plus you are right on the grounds of the show and don’t have to deal with the horrendous lines of traffic each day coming into the huge parking lots and then still have to walk a mile to get into the show. Camping is the way to see the Oshkosh Air Show and we really liked the flexibility of not needing to register well in advance so we could be more fluid with our arrival. That is NOT something you can hope to do at the Albuquerque Balloon Festival.
We also needed to pay for our entrance fees for the show. It is possible to get day passes but since we are here for the full week, they also have weekly passes. And by becoming a EAA member to camp, we receive a discount on our weekly passes. We payed $158 per person for our passes The pass consists of wristbands which were fortunately made out of very tough stuff given that we needed to wear them for 7 days straight. We also receive a pass for the car to be able to get back into the campground. We only ventured out the few days before the show started to avoid dealing with the traffic.
CAMPING Camp Scholler is the campground located at the air show. It is around 400 acres and has roughly 12,000 sites. There are several campsite categories to pick from but any of the sites with water and electric will need to be reserved many months in advance. There are many dry camping lots - some allow 24 hour generator usage and others prohibit generators completely and others allow generators only between certain hours. These areas are all first come first served. Within any given lot, there are no individual campsites marked off. The concept is to park in the chosen field and you get a 5 foot perimeter around your camper or tent as well as room for a transient vehicle.
The image below (from EAA website) shows the scope of the show grounds. The blue outline shows the camping area with a small green X (on the right) showing our campsite. The red box shows where the main venue is and the green box is the museum. The two runways are the pink lines. For reference, the full area is about 1.5 miles deep and 2.25 miles wide and covers 1600 acres!
Aerial View of Oshkosh Airventure
We decided to come in on the Friday a few days before the official start of the show. This seemed to work out well from the perspective that the lots were not too full nor the line of people coming in too long. Depending on the type of camping unit you have and what the weather has been like recently or will be like over the course of your stay will highly determine where you can or should park. Those coming in a tent or some small popup trailer will have more flexibility in getting a spot even later in the show. People like us with very heavy rigs need to watch out for wet areas since they can turn into muddy messes and may require some big equipment to pull you out.
Birdseye View of Our Rig (left) and Neighbors
We did have our neighbors on both side of us leave several days before the show was over so many people don’t stay for the full event. This potentially means that those coming in for the last couple days of the show might be able to find a decent spot but it will be a bit of a gamble. While some people try to get a spot close to the entrance gate so they can walk to the show from their site, we found that the bus service that runs during the show was very reliable and convenient. There are some occasions, especially when leaving the event grounds after the daily air show, when the line for the bus back to camp was very long and we knew we could walk the 1.25 miles to the rig faster than the buses could fill up and drive us home.
One very nice feature about Camp Scholler is that there are multiple shower houses/bathrooms scattered around the grounds. The one nearest our site was about 600 feet so it was fairly convenient. There were about 20 individual shower rooms with a locking door as well as several dozen shower stalls in each of the men’s and women’s restrooms. There was only one time when we attempted to take a shower during “peak time” and the wait was maybe 10 minutes or so but most times we could find an open shower when we walked over with no waiting. The showers are a bit unusual in that there is no temperature control. You just get a rubber hose hanging from the wall with a nozzle much like a kitchen sink sprayer. It takes a bit more work since you need to alternate which hand is spraying to clean both sides of your body. They also have lots of electrical outlets around the perimeter of the building so many visitors were taking the opportunity to charge their phones.
One of Several Large Shower Houses
The actual bathroom stalls here had flush toilets but we found that the porta-potties scattered all around the grounds in groups of 4 to 10 were some of the cleanest we have ever seen. And that is saying a lot given how many people are camped here. I never noticed them being cleaned but we suspect they were cleaned at least twice a day.
Another convenience at Camp Scholler were the several Red One Markets on the grounds. Given the size of the stores, it was amazing how much stuff they actually carried. They had a wide range of food and other supplies visitors of the show would likely want or need. We have a full size residential refrigerator so we had come well stocked for our meals but if you are in a tent and only have a small cooler and propane grill, you could find everything you need. I guess that might be even more important for the people that fly their own planes to the show and pitch their tents right next to the plane. They likely aren’t bringing in a large number of supplies with them so the Red One Market would be perfect.
Red One Market
Inside Store
There is one dump station with 4 lanes so it is possible to dump your holding tanks on your way out like we did. We had a spot within sight of the dump station and many people were pulling “blue boys” to dump their holding tanks during the week. We had no trouble in that regard since our tanks are fairly large and we took most of our showers at the shower houses. You can also fill your fresh water tank here but appears to be gravity fill only which wouldn’t work well for our plumbing connections.
EAA APP Just like many things nowadays, there’s an app for that. Airventure was no different. The app has all sorts of information including the schedule for all the events. You can select certain talks or shows for the full week and it will remind you when you need to be somewhere. Since we were mostly winging it (pun intended!), we likely didn’t use the app to its fullest potential but if you are here to attend the various talks and seminars, I could see where this would be a great help. You could also setup notifications for bad weather since that could be a possibility in the middle of July.
DAILY AIR SHOWS On each of the seven days the show is open, there is an afternoon air show. They start at 2:15 and last four hours. Since the majority of the air show occurs high in the sky, to some degree, you can watch the show from lots of locations. But for the best viewing you want to be along the area known as the “flightline”. The airport at Oshkosh has two main runways. The 8000 foot long one is oriented in a north/south direction on the east side of the grounds. The shorter one runs in an east/west direction on the north side. We knew the flightline was all along the longer runway but on the first day of the show, we had talked with a guy at lunch who has come to the show for years and asked specifically where was a good viewing spot. He told us that a lot of people head to a spot known as the Brown Arch. We arrived over an hour before the first show and all the spots right along the edge of the spectator area was already occupied. So if you want an up front spot, plan on getting there quite early.
The Brown Arch
Back a Few Rows from Flightline
Many private planes of visitors are parked in the field along the flightline and we had heard that getting a spot underneath a wing of one of them is usually permitted and will provide some shade which is helpful on hot sunny Wisconsin afternoons. The spot we picked that first day worked out well, so we tended to at least head back to the same general area but since the crowd size varied and we didn’t always make it extra early, we just found a spot to sit and relax. Chairs are permitted but since most of the action takes place overhead, we found that just sitting on the ground and being able to lay back helps to get a decent view without needing to strain your neck. We took a blanket the first day, but even though it had been dry since we arrived 4 days earlier, we found that it tended to get wet given how long we were there. Chris has a yoga mat that is a decent size and mostly waterproof so that was our preferred ground cover.
Chris Found Some Shade
Each air show begins with some parachuting team dropped from high above and bringing in the American Flag while the crowd stands for the National Anthem. There were the US Army Golden Knights and an all woman skydiving team called the Misty Blues.
Three Skydivers Circled by Planes
Army Golden Knights
Another Air Show Opening Flag
Each day the actual participants of the air show changed although there were several that flew on multiple days. We went to 5 of the 7 afternoon shows only skipping the ones that took place on Wednesday and Saturday when there was also going to be a night show. We figured that doing a 4 hour afternoon show followed by a 3 hour evening show was just a bit too much. I’ll admit that even the afternoon shows of 4 hours seemed a bit long especially sitting in the hot sun. But since we had the expected schedules for each day, we always found that we stuck around just to see some upcoming participants. There were two Goodyear blimps in attendance at the show. They were parked in some large fields near the show but would often be seen circling around the show grounds.
Goodyear Blimp "Wingfoot One" Attached to Mobile Dock
Goodyear Blimp "Wingfoot Two" Silently Floats By
Each afternoon, there were several aerobatic acts. Sometimes it was a team of 2 or 3 which really allowed for some precise flying. They almost always had their smoke turned on to help track the planes and allowed them to actually create shapes in the air like a heart. There were days when the wind conditions were poor and the smoke just seemed to hang over the runway making visibility a bit of an issue. The solo aerobatic flyers performed all sorts of tricks. Including steep climbs, stalls and spins as they plummeted back towards the ground always pulling up just in time.
Heart of Smoke
Trio of Bi-planes
Upside Down Pass
Team Redline - Right Side Up and Upside Down
Each day always included many of the Warbirds taking to the sky to put on a display. The first day may have been the best when 80 of them were in the air at once often in large groups flying in formation. They would come in from all directions crisscrossing the sky above the audience.
Some of the 80 Warbirds Overhead
Group of 10 Warbirds
Another Group with 25
When these Warbirds were in smaller groups (would they be called flocks?), they would fly at lower altitude and buzz just over the runway giving us a great view of the planes with the afternoon sun behind us, the lighting was often excellent for photography.
P-51 Mustang
TBM Avenger
There were a couple of times during the show where some of the older military planes would fly along current day fighters - known as a Heritage Flight.
Heritage Flight
F-35A Lightning II, P-51 Mustang and P47 Thunderbolt
Old and New Taxi for Takeoff
Most of the show planes would takeoff and land on the longer runway in front of the crowd, so being closer to the edge provides the best view of the impressive launches as well as the planes taxiing past us as they head back to their parking spot.
Prepared to Takeoff
Quick Exit
P-47 Thunderbolt Readies for Takeoff
F35 Taxies by After Flight
T-28 Trojan Trainer about to Land
T-28 Pilot Waves to Crowd
The announcers and PA system definitely helps to explain about the planes, pilots and even which direction to look since they would come in from all angles. We noticed this most on the last afternoon show where we were able to get right along the edge of the flight line for excellent viewing but the volunteers were actively removing some of the lights and speakers from around the grounds making it a bit more difficult to hear.
Sparse Crowd for the Very Last Air Show on Sunday
De Havilland Vampire Ready for Takeoff
Pitts Special Aerobatic Biplane
Susan Dacy Flies "Big Red"
One performer that had flown on several days earlier in the show was Kyle Franklin and his wife Liz. During those first couple of shows, it was difficult to see what was going on from where we were sitting, but we knew it was sort of a mixture of comedy and flying. On the last day when we were right up front with a great view, we were able to truly experience their show. He pretends to be drunk, steal a plane while his wife chases him around the runway. His whole acts takes place just a few feet off the ground but more often with just one wheel on the ground as he tips the plane and actually scrapes his wing on the pavement! The announcers comment on how gifted you need to be to fly that poorly without crashing.
Liz Franklin Waving Down Plane
Kyle Franklin Scraping His Wing!
Another Scraped Wing
Another act, Skip Stewart, has a beautiful biplane that did all sorts of aerobatics. Part of his show was to have a team of volunteers take out two long poles with orange caution tape tied between them. The two horizontal pieces of tape were about 15 and 25 feet off the ground and then he proceeded to make passes where he would shred the tape with his propeller - sometimes right side up, other times upside down. This was another show best seen from the edge of the flightline.
Skip Stewart in Prometheus
Coming in Upside Down to Shred Caution Tape
A Split Second Later - Success
One last specialty act was something I didn’t even realize existed - an aerobatic helicopter. Aaron Fitzgerald flies his helicopter above the crowd as he performs all sorts of flips and rolls. It was an amazing show that always seemed like there would be no way he could pull off that move.
Helicopter Performs a Roll
Mid Flip
Of course no air show would be complete without lots of current day military aircraft. Pull out your earplugs and get ready for some noise and speed. All sorts of aircraft from the Navy, Air Force and Marines attended Oshkosh this year. Besides speed and maneuverability, there were some jets that had some pretty cool features like the ability to redirect the engine to point downward and hover a hundred feet off the ground and rotate the plane in a circle. I suspect there is some sort of rule about these planes not breaking the speed of sound, but you could tell the pilots pushed them right up to the limit based on some of the photos I took.
MiG-29 Fulcrum
F-35 with Bomb Bay Doors Open
C-17 Globemaster Transport Plane
Nearly at Speed of Sound!
Pilot Give a Wave to Crowd
F-35 Hovering Over Runway
Fighter Pilot Get a Big Cheer from Oshkosh Crowd
Sometimes there would be a group of military planes that would put on a demonstration of a mission taking out ground combatants. Of course they were not dropping live rounds, but they did have ground explosives going off at the right time to make it appear it was a real mission. It wasn’t clear how the fireballs were created but the sound and even the heat from them going off was pretty intense.
Simulated Bombing, Real Explosion
Another Big Boom
Target Destroyed
We lucked out and had pretty decent weather for each day of the show. It was often hot and sunny - remember your sunscreen and wide brimmed hats. But we only had the threat of rain on one of the afternoons but fortunately it stayed just north of the show and only created some pretty dramatic skies in the background.
Dramatic Backdrop for Plane
P-47 Thunderbolt with Low Altitude Pass
Storm Stays to the North by Just Enough!
Being able to attend the afternoon air shows on several days was definitely an advantage for us. Occasionally one of the scheduled military planes from a base would experience technical issues and not be able to make it. But in those cases, the staff running the show would often be able to work in some other planes to fill in the gap. Let’s just say that the show never left us wanting for more.
Close Up of Control Tower
"The Pink Jet" for Breast Cancer Awareness Makes a Pass
Another Multi-Plane Formation
T-33 Trainer Taxies After Flight
The last daily air show on Sunday afternoon was
NIGHT AIR SHOWS Besides the afternoon air shows, there are evening shows on Wednesday and Saturday at 8 PM. The weather had turned bad on that Wednesday afternoon with all sorts of warnings being issued for the area and cautioning campers to batten down the hatches. We weren’t sure if the night show was going to be cancelled due to the weather, but other than some strong winds, the rain stayed out of the immediate area and the show went on. That hesitation on our part did mean we didn’t make it over to the flightline as early as we should have. We had thought the afternoon shows were crowded - well the evening show crowd was substantially larger.
Crowd Before the Saturday Night Show
Several different performers take to the sky at twilight. Photography becomes a bit more problematic but that just means I’m able to sit back and enjoy the show.
Trio of Aerobatic Planes at Twilight
As darkness falls, more planes take to the skies. These tend to have all sorts of fireworks and lights and often have sparks streaming from the rear of the plane making them look like giant sparklers in the sky.
After several acts, the show switches gears a bit and starts to bring out the fireworks and laser light show. They were choreographed to music and quite impressive. They reminded us of the pyrotechnics show we saw in Lake Havasu years ago.
Next came the drone show. We have never experienced a drone show in person having only seen them on TV for events like the opening ceremony at the Olympics. There were on the order of 500 drones and it was definitely an impressive show. Again they were choreographed to music or a soundtrack. Most of the drone formations were of aircraft - such as a tanker refueling a fighter jet. What is so cool about them is they actually are forming a 3D replica of the planes, that gives them depth as they move through the sky.
Tanker Refuels Fighter
Drones Create Airplane
Bird and Fireworks
But it wasn’t like the drones were doing their thing without lots of fireworks and even some more of those massive fire bombs blasting on the far side of the runway. It sure seems like the shock wave and heat from the blast would interfere with the drones but they seemed to fly just fine. Even in the midst of this controlled chaos, more planes with fireworks would fly overhead somehow not impacted by the rest of the show.
Kaboom!
Possibly my favorite part of the night show was when the drones created various dinosaurs. These would “walk” in the air and turn all while music from what sounded like Jurassic Park played over the speaker system. As T-Rex turns its head and opens its mouth it roars.
Triceratops
Of course the grand finale was spectacular. The show left us with chills. The Saturday evening show was pretty much an exact copy of the earlier one. I have put together a video which includes snippets of the night show which does a much better job of showing how impressive the show was. If you are only able to attend Oshkosh for a day or two, I highly recommend you time it to coincide with one of the night shows. Of course the walk back a mile and a quarter in the dark with thousands of other people was not real fun. We knew there was no way we could catch a bus ride and even if we did, it wouldn’t have been moving any fast than the crowds clogging the streets.
WARBIRDS AREA One of the larger and more popular corners of the show was the Warbird Area. These planes were former military aircraft - jets, bombers, fighters and trainers. Most of them have been restored to their original paint schemes back when they were in service. There are many of these styles of aircraft all over the country in museums. I’m sure we have seen many static displays of these beautiful planes, but the motto of this group is to “keep them flying”. There were 400 or more of these aircraft that were flown in for the show on display. The amazing thing is that all of these planes are privately owned and the owners bring them to Oshkosh on their own dime. A great number of them will also participate in the daily air shows.
Entrance to Warbirds
F8F Bearcat
AD-5 Skyraider
We start out waiting in line to take the free tram tour of the warbird area. The tour guides have extensive knowledge about all these planes and even know the owners of most of them. It is clear this is one of the more tight knit groups. The wide area of planes from that era was astounding. There were even some Russian military planes on display. I guess when the USSR broke up, there were a large number of planes that went on the market and there were lots of people wanting to have something like a MiG-15 to fly.
Tram Tour at Warbirds Area
MiG-17 on Taxiway
After we completed the tram tour, we slowly wandered the grounds again taking a closer look at the beautiful planes. Every now and then , they would start one up and move all the people out of the way so it could taxi over to take off. This was definitely one of my favorite parts of the show grounds.
F7F Tigercat
Breast Cancer Awareness Plane
B-25 Mitchell
T-28 Trojan Trainer Heads Out for a Flight
One corner of the Warbirds area is known as Miller Field. It is an historical reenactment of the 340th Bombardment Group from World War II. They have many tents setup with displays and information from this era. Like many historical groups, all the members are dressed in period clothing and are more than willing to answer questions.
Miller Field
Inside the Historical Reenactment Camp
EAA MUSEUM There is a large aviation museum on the grounds that is included with our show admission price. We had watched and read all about the airshow and some people suggested you skip the museum during the show and come back to tour it when it isn’t so crowded so that you can actually enjoy all the museum has to offer. I suppose that would work if you live a reasonable distance from Oshkosh. But with our travel plans, we don’t anticipate getting back here in the future so we headed over to spend some time with a few hundred other people.
EAA Museum
Entrance Lobby of Museum
It’s a beautiful building with two floors of displays to explore. We spent nearly 90 minutes wandering around. There are more than 200 historic aircraft on display from a replica of the Wright brothers plane up to much newer and sleeker models. One end of the museum is dedicated to the founder of the Experimental Aircraft Association - Paul Poberenzy. Back in 1953, he and a few of his aviation enthusiast friends decided to create an organization that was dedicated to the work they loved. The walls of the room are filled with old photos and all sorts of memorabilia from him.
Wright Brothers Replica
EAA Memorabilia
Planes were displayed all over each of the floors as well as hanging from the ceiling and even mounted to the walls. It was an impressive display. Each plane has a description of the history of the plane or its pilot. For the most part, we were unfamiliar with the majority of the people and planes honored here, but if you have an aviation passion, you would likely need to spend a great deal more time here to soak it all in.
"Turbulence"
View from Second Floor
The other really nice aspect of the museum is that has air conditioning. We were experiencing some hot days, and since almost all of the show is outdoors, having a place to come to cool off was nice. The only downside is that the museum seems to be an entrance from one of the main parking areas so there was always a huge mass of people wandering through the main entrance.
Curtiss P-6E Hawk
KIDVENTURE Located in the Pioneer Airport, not far from the museum, is a series of programs offer all week geared towards children. KidVenture has a wide variety of activities that children can sign up for to teach them some principles of planes and aviation. We wandered through the building and it was jam packed with kids. We watched some of the projects that they were working on and I’ll admit it looked pretty fun and informative. I can’t personally vouch for the activities but it sure looked like something worth bringing along the little ones if you have them.
Hangar at Pioneer Airport
DeLorean Made It to the Show
VINTAGE PLANES AREA The Vintage Aircraft Association has an area on the grounds with lots of old civil airplanes. We headed there one day to check it out and happened to be there for to take in a show by the Ladies for Liberty. The trio performed lots of World War II era songs.
Curtiss Robin
Ladies for Liberty Perform
After the singing, some of the plane owners came up and described how they ended up with their old planes and what it is like to keep them running to attend shows around the country. They even had two old engines with wooden propellers, not installed in a plane but just sitting in a stand with a chair behind it. The owners came out and after a bit of applying just the right technique, got the beasts running all while the wind and smoke was blowing in their faces.
Meyers OTW
Smoky Job
They have a fairly large building where there were lots of different workshops were in progress showing some of the tips and tricks required to fix these old planes.
Learning to Apply Fabric to Plane Parts
SEAPLANE BASE There is a seaplane base about 5 miles from the main show. They have buses that run between the bus station on the show grounds and the base for $5 per person round trip. You can drive there on your own but it cost $25 to park so the bus is a cheaper option and we don’t need to contend with the traffic when we come back to Camp Scholler. There isn’t a lot going on at this location but it is definitely a pretty spot and has a much calmer vibe than the main show.
Entrance to Seaplane Base
There were a few seaplanes at the docks and some more attached to mooring balls in a small harbor of Lake Winnebago. We only saw one of the planes taking off when we were there. There are also a few vendor booths and they had the option to take a tour boat ride. There were also a few RVs in the camping area probably for the vendors. We did walk over to find a nearby geocache before getting in line to take the return bus to the show. If you only make it to Oshkosh for a day or two, you may want to skip this side trip but if you’re here for the week, definitely fit it into your schedule.
Seaplane at Dock
VENDORS and EXHIBITORS There were nearly 1000 commercial exhibitors at the show. You could buy anything from brand new planes or just some titanium hardware to finish up the plane you have been building for the past few years. We wandered through the large hangars that had many of the vendors and marveled at just how much stuff there is to buy when you own a plane.
Buy Your Own Seaplane
Nice Paint Job
Large Garmin Building
There did seem to be way fewer vendors selling crap unrelated to aviation. The RV shows we have attended seem to have a lot more oddball items that are not RV specific. Maybe the price for a booth here keeps the junk sellers away or maybe there is a vetting process that vendors need to pass? That’s not to say there weren’t non-aviation vendors. We checked out quite a few extreme off-road RVs that would really open up the possibilities of where we could camp. I suspect that the type of person that flies or builds their own plane has a bit more of an adventurous spirit and possibly the disposable income to purchase a monster truck with a fully off grid camper. There are vendors selling food although we found it easier to bring something with us although and afternoon ice cream during the air show was tasty.
EarthRoamer SX
Rossmonster
As we were heading through Boing Plaza into the vendor area after the air show was over on Friday, there were hundreds of service members all lined up. When we asked about what was going on, we were told that an Honor Flight was about to arrive and they were getting ready to greet the veterans.
Ready for Honor Flight Arriving at Oshkosh
AIRCRAFT TO TOUR There were a variety of aircraft to tour on the show grounds. There was the Pratt & Whitney 747SP. This is a big airplane, but on the first day the line to enter it looked like it went on forever. We skipped going inside and when we came back towards the end of the show, it was already getting ready to leave and tours were over. There were a fair number of military planes displayed on the show grounds that were not flying as part of the air shows. We did manage to to tour a KC-135R Stratotanker. Part of the Wisconsin Air National Guard, this plane was very cool to check out. It was about a 25 minute wait in line to finally make it up and into the plane.
Pratt & Whitney 747SP
C-17 Cargo Plane
KC-135R Stratotanker
As we headed to the rear of the plane, we were greeted by the woman that flies on this plane as the refueling specialist. She described how she needs to lay down on the sling while looking out the window and lower the flying boom, all while instructing the pilot of her plane and the one being refueled on all the parameters of maintaining the proper distance. Depending on the amount of fuel required, this will take 4 minutes or much longer. We also waited to be able to sit up in the cockpit. I’m guessing there were many more opportunities to tour other aircraft if we had just looked around more and were willing to wait in long lines.
Captain Jack Ready for Takeoff
NIGHTLY TALKS AND MOVIES The events don’t stop in the evening. Most nights there are movies at the Fly-In Theater. We actually never make it to one of the movies. They were all aviation themed movies with the majority of them being ones we have never heard of other than Top Gun. I’m not saying that it didn’t sound fun, however by 8:30 PM, we were typically too tired from all the other things we did and the insane amount of walking during the course of the day. Plus we knew the next day we had more of the same. Movies are something we can do on our own at a more convenient time and place.
They also had special talks each night at 8:30 in the Theater in the Woods. This is a large covered building without walls on three sides and a stage up front. They have a decent sound and video system so that even if you are way in the back, the presenters are projected on the large screen. On the first night we went there, we had brought along some folding chairs but didn’t need them since there were hundreds of chairs setup for the talks.
We looked over the various presentations and picked two of them to attend. The first was a presentation named An Evening with Champions. Three different people gave talks. The first to speak was 73 year old Sean Tucker. A pilot that has been flying since he was 17 and performing in air shows since the mid 1970’s. In that time he has accumulated over 34,000 hours of flight time and performed in more than 2000 air shows. He is a good speaker and had some fascinating stories about his career.
The second speaker was Heidi Porch. A retired commercial pilot with Delta, she described a harrowing event that took place back in 1984. At the age of 28, she was working for a company that transferred new planes from the USA to places like Australia and New Zealand in the South Pacific. On one trip, her plane had a complete engine failure and she needed to ditch in the middle of the Pacific over 500 miles from land. It was a remarkable story even though it was clear she had survived. We didn’t stick around for the third speaker.
On another night, we headed back to the venue to check out another talk. This one titled NASA Moon to Mars. This talk included 4 speakers involved in the Artemis mission in a variety of roles in the upcoming missions to the moon and to Mars. They had lots of great stories about what is involved in planning for such a mission. Hearing about all the work from people like the flight director and even one of the astronauts was pretty interesting.
FORUMS WORKSHOPS AND PRESENTATIONS There were over 65 different venues scattered around the show grounds which have a plethora of presentations. With over 1600 sessions during the week, you could easily spend every day going from one talk to another. We took a look at the list of talks to see if there were any that might be up our alley. Not all of them appeared to be simply sales pitches by vendors like many of the ones I used to see at motion picture trade shows I attended back in my working life at Eastman Kodak. In fact, based on the titles of many talks, it would seem like a majority of them are fellow pilots or amateur plane builders explaining topics they are familiar with and want to share the knowledge with like minded individuals.
But the truth was, I really had no need to learn about sheet metal techniques for building my airplane or what was the proper engine mount needed for the one I plan on installing in my plane. But after browsing through the list, it became clear why the people that are passionate about flying and plane building come back here year after year. I got the sense that for many of the attendees, the main draw is the sense of community at Airventure. I did find two talks about photography that looked promising and learned a few things about aspects of shooting planes I had not really considered.
We also attended a movie at the theater inside of the museum. The main draw for watching the 2 hour and 22 minutes one afternoon was that it was going to be extremely hot that afternoon and sitting inside an air conditioned theater sounded like a way to beat the heat. It helped that it was a Tom Hanks movie - Bridge of Spies. A story about the spy swap of a Russian spy in custody in the USA and Francis Gary Powers, the pilot of the American U-2 spy plane shot down while flying over the USSR in 1960. While the story was more about the prisoner swap than the spy plane, there was the obvious aviation connection. It wasn’t simply the movie we wanted to see but Gary Powers JR, the pilot’s son, was going to introduce the film and then come back after the movie to discuss the movie and answer questions. His father was vilified back during the Cold War and he’s trying to set the record straight regarding the misinformation and clear his father’s name. It was an entertaining movie, made more interesting by the son’s account plus we had 3 hours of cool temperatures.
AIRSHOW STATS We shouldn’t take credit for there being a record number of attendees at Airventure this year, but we were part of the total numbers. An estimated 704,000 people attended the air show over the course of the week which was a new record. There were over 15,000 camping sites, be it fly in with your plane or drive in with a car and tent or a big rig like ours. This accounted for around 40,000 people. There were 2543 show planes this year and I probably took pictures of all of them! I had mentioned that the show is run by volunteers - 6000 of them contributing over 300,000 hours.
Over 10,000 aircraft arrived at the airport here for the show. This airport boasts that it is the busiest airport in the world for the week of the show. In the 11 day period extending a few days before and after the show, there were 16,246 aircraft operations which means that when the tower was open, there were an average of 108 takeoffs and landings per hour. I didn’t see any stats around how many planes were sold during the show, but we didn’t buy one even though I saw a few that looked like a lot of fun.
We had heard that the Oshkosh air show was one of those events that should be on people’s bucket list. So we had worked the stop into our travel plans for this summer. We weren’t positive what to expect but had come with open minds. Not being huge airplane nerds, we figured we would get bored with it after a few days but they did have a decent refund policy for the camping portion of the fees, so leaving early wouldn’t cost us all that much. But we discovered that camping in a huge field with thousands of other people wasn’t as bad as we thought. I guess it did help that the weather stayed pretty dry so we had no problems driving out on Monday morning.
We discovered that even airplane novices like us can enjoy all the activities. I can only image what this must be like for former or current pilots or for the people building planes in their barn back home to come here - likely year after year. Would we go back? Sure but probably not for a few years, but I think we would enjoy attending again and find more things to see and do that we missed this year, because we likely only scratched the surface of Oshkosh Airventure.
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