This was my first trip to the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA)
AirVenture national convention in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
Pilots everywhere just call it "Oshkosh".
It's like a state fair, trade show, fly-in, convention, conference
and air show.
A city of 62,000 and the surrounding region host over half a million visitors!
12,000 planes flew in - the rest of the people arrived by ground.
Some people find it surprising that I've been a pilot over 2 decades
and hadn't been there before. After all, this is the big event all pilots
know they must attend some time.
Well, I'll admit I had previously let the distance from California
and the crowds intimidate me.
But this time, I planned to go and even had to overcome some obstacles
(like re-arranging my transportation from scratch 3 days before the show)
to make it.
But Oshkosh isn't just about the planes, talks, workshops and booths.
It's the people you meet there.
All of us come with a common interest in aviation.
So there are fun and fascinating conversations everywhere every day.
It's half a million of us sharing the "hangar talk" from our home
airports with each other, and with others seeking to get into aviation.
You can't begin to describe AirVenture without mentioning that aspect of it.
There's so much to see and do.
Oshkosh is often described as like "drinking from a fire hose".
If you stop, even to sleep at night, you're going to miss something.
For any real aviation enthusiast, you can't even see the whole show in the
week that you have available.
It's just impossible. But that isn't a bad thing.
Knowing that advice, I didn't try to see everything.
I tried to see a lot, meet people, have fun and learn.
I consider it a complete success.
For more information, see EAA's AirVenture
web site
and latest news.
EAA has a 17-minute video showing newcomers what AirVenture is about called
"Oshkosh: The Spirit of Aviation
narrated by Harrison Ford. (Ford didn't just play a pilot on Star Wars.
He is a pilot.)
For an incredible 5-minute blizzard of images of AirVenture 2010,
I recommend the video
"Beyond this historic Brown Gate" Airventure 2010
by Wesley "Slick" Perkins (@slick_hutto on Twitter).
Slick, a 19 year old pilot and apparently excellent videographer,
said he has come to Oshkosh 8 times with his father.
If I talk to anyone about Oshkosh and their response has the word
"Bigosh", then they've already failed the test -
they don't have a clue what this is about.
(The clothing manufacturer they're thinking of is also located
in Oshkosh, WI.)
No big deal. It just tells me to start from the beginning...
I explored the EAA Museum in the morning and early afternoon.
Since this was the day of the "maximum effort" for warbirds and DC-3's
in the air show, it was also my maximum effort at photographing the air show.
So this is the day with the most pictures.
After overnight rain, Wednesday began with a renewed soggy condition
around Oshkosh that everyone had hoped would go away.
In a bit of irony, just after I stopped by the Federal Pavillion and
got some brochures from the National Weather Service, it started to rain
again briefly.
Fortunately, it wasn't much and it was the last of it for the week.
I returned for more of a look around the EAA Museum.
I saw more of the static display planes.
I attended a panel by the National Association of Flight Instructors (NAFI)
on the Future of Flight Instruction.
From this point on, the week would become more busy with meetings and forums.
Each day shows a new side of Oshkosh to me. Thursday began with
a breakfast meeting of the National Association of Flight Instructors (NAFI).
It continued with forums by Dick and Burt Rutan.
I did a little more exploration and looking at booths.
It concluded with a dinner banquet
of the Society of Aviation and Flight Educators (SAFE)
at the terminal building.
I'm a member of both NAFI and SAFE.
For me, Friday was workshops and forums. The crowds were ramping up to the maximum on Saturday. The airport had significantly dried out from earlier rains - so aircraft parking and camping had swelled to looking full. I got more air show pictures. There was a lot to see. And time was running out to see it.
On Saturday, AirVenture took its awesomeness to a new level.
I got to meet some online acquaintances who arrived on a Southwest 737
that came for display at Aeroshell Square.
I offered to show them around since they only had the morning and afternoon
to see Oshkosh. They thought it was generous of me.
It was actually at least as much fun for me.
But that offer to help them put me in the right place at the right time to
get a tour of a Beech Starship, the chase plane for SpaceShipOne.
A great day was capped off with a fun dinner social at the Seaplane Base.
And then Oshkosh's first night air show wowed the crowd far beyond even
the organizers' wildest expectations.
Calling it a good day would be the understatement of the year.
For me, it was the pinnacle day of the world's most amazing aviation show.
Day 7, the final day. The exodus of airplanes began in earnest.
Things were definitely winding down with a much smaller crowd.
But things weren't winding down for me until mid-afternoon.
It was my last chance to see booths and forums before time ran out.
When the ending time came, I called it a success and headed out to the
rental car. I drove to Chicago in preparation for the next day's flight home.
The story of the day was the non-stop flight from Chicago Midway Airport
to San Jose.
As I usually do, I took advantage of the 35,000' view and got some pictures.
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unless explicitly indicated otherwise.
Permission is required to use my images, and usually available if you ask first.
