Another Trip to Oshkosh
I had so much fun at Oshkosh in 2001 that I just had to go again. It is the worlds largest gathering of airplanes, so pilots and planes start arriving more than a week before opening day. If you get there early you get to park near the center of everything. By opening day the airfield is sometimes full of planes and they won't let any more come in. I left Medford, Oregon three days before the show started. This is a brief recap of the adventure. I'll leave out the wild, scary, and tattooing parts of the story. You probably don't want to know about those anyway.
The route I chose this year took me across southern Idaho, then over some very high mountains in Wyoming. This picture is looking northward at the Bridger-Teton National Forest area. At over 13,000' elevation, the trees won't even grow on these ridges and they still have snow on the south sides in late July. There are routes around the mountains, but our adventurous Tri-Pacer wanted to go up and over for the best view on this particular afternoon. With a slight tailwind, we covered about 1,200 miles that first day, reaching my overnight stop in Valentine, Nebraska.
Once again, the second day of our adventure promised to get interesting with the usual summertime thunderstorms along our route. Many of the pilots arriving from the southern US were turned away by a long line of nasty storms, but northern Nebraska and Iowa had scattered cloud groups and there were paths around them.
I joined up with a bunch of Short Wing Piper flyers in Hartford, Wisconsin (HXF) the day before opening of the Oshkosh show. Everyone got to tell flying stories, many of which were true >grin<, over pizza and steaks at a local restaurant . A few more short wingers arrived at HXF in the morning, including a Colt pilot who had just heard about our group arrival plans. At 7:25 AM under clear blue skies we headed north. We had previously arranged with OSH tower for a straight in approach to runway 36 from about 20 miles south of the field. The control tower guys opened a window in the airplane arrival stream for us so we could slip right in. Our experienced leaders, Jim Page and his communication specialist Warren, led us onto the big runway without a hitch. This is probably the safest way to fly in to OSH. Our group did not have to join the traffic over Rippon or Fisk, circle the lake while holding for clearance, or extend the downwind for runway 27 three miles out over Lake Winnebago.
This picture shows the view on short final to runway 36. You can see four of the short wingers that have just landed. The runway is so long and wide that they could safely land a lot of short wings all at the same time. They parked us in the Vintage camping area, only five rows from the showers and a shuttle pickup corner. If any short wing flyers out there are hesitant to fly their planes into Oshkosh because of the air traffic, they should contact the SWPC about joining the group arrival in the future. Besides being very safe and easy, it was fun!
This picture shows a tan colored SuperClipper, a Colt (past the two blue planes), Pacers, and Tri-Pacers. The grass fields all around the airport are covered with airplanes, tents, motor homes, and people. It's quite a sight. The Experimental Aircraft Association sets up showers, tented restaurants (carnival food), vendor buildings, exhibit areas galore, and (one of my favorites) the flea market. This year I bought some new bolts and some seat belts that all match!
This departing picture shows about three percent of the airplanes on the field. In the center and left side are the ultralight areas. The upper right shows the antique and vintage area. Homebuilts and contemporary planes are mixed along the bottom and from the top left to center are some of the motor homes.
On the trip home I stopped overnight in a little South Dakota town named Sturgis. They had a rather famous motorcycle gathering going on there with lots of shiny chrome Harleys, leather jackets, and biker bars. This is where the wild, scary, and tattooing parts get left out of this story...
