OSH 2008

Well it finally arrived, and earliery than I had planned! I've been planning to show up Friday night or Saturday a.m. for a long time, but this year OSH fever really got the best of me for many reasons. It became harder to think about anything else, other than going to OSH. So when I heart Scott and RaNae were coming thru Thursday afternoon, I told them to stop on by and we'd join them for the trip in. So as of Thursday 8/24/08, the first 2 RV-10's have arrived!

Day 1 - Thursday Pre-Show

We had packed really heavily for the trip. Our camper and van were awaiting us there, stuffed to the gills, but there was plenty more to come. With lots of frozen foods we purchased a 70qt cooler and I bought 50lbs of ice, and filled the cooler to the absolute top. Yes, a 70qt cooler can fit thru the back baggage door (if you remove the screws and take the lid completely off) with 6-8" of room to spare on all sides. We packed in an extra tent, and lawn chairs and bags, and pretty soon it was overflowing the rear seats. Add in my geek toys and the front was filling too. Tell you what, today I REALLY appreciated being toward the forward CG position, because I needed it! Funny thing is, I thought WE were packed until Scott, RaNae, and a friend of theirs showed up, with the rear open seat loaded past the windows. The RV-10 is truly a workhorse of a travel machine!

Enroute to OSH had to be one of the most wonderful flights I've made. We got up in the cool air above a cloud layer and danced around the sky shooting photos. The air was smooth, and when you can see a beautiful RV-10 like theirs out your wing, it really makes for a wonderful flight. We both were a bit disappointed that it only takes an hour from my place...we could have used 3 more. We arrived before the special NOTAM procedures were in effect, and when I saw how empty of planes the field was, I had to ask the tower "Hey, isn't there supposed to be a pancake breakfast here or something? It looks kinda slow". That brought some chuckles and good natured humor back from the tower controllers. The approach and landing were perfect, and we were parked right in the first row of the RV lot or so. In fact, Friday we have to move back a row as they put us too far forward.

Once we were tied down and unloaded, it was time to head to camp and set up the trailers. It didn't take long to notice the long grass of the campsites. THANK YOU Michael Sausen for leaving the mower...I used it right away to mow all of the sites in RV-10 HQ Group 1 so that when people can arrive they can just pull in and set up. Then it was out to eat with Scott, RaNae, his parents, and my family. Scott's clan is the nicest of people you'll ever meet.

WiFi didn't work for me in Scholler, so if you're reading this, it was uploaded thru my cell. Let's hope they fix this soon!!

Our Day 2 - Friday Pre-Show

No new RV-10's showed up today, and the weather was cloudy but not rainy. The big excitement of the day was seeing a Citation jet (from the Border Patrol) that didn't listen to the parking crew and taxiied onto the grass in a low muddy spot and sank in up to the axles. That gets everyone's attention. Below are a couple of shots of the fairly empty RV lot, as the weather was IFR a portion of the day. Vic and Carol Syracuse who now has over 50 hours on their RV-7 (all in July 2008!) flew in on an IFR reservation in the afternoon, and got a spot right between the RV-10 HQ groups. In the evenings we pulled out the geek toys and rocked the site with some Guitar hero.

Our Day 3 - Saturday Pre-Show

Saturday I got up and flew my daughter home to pick up more people for our group. As we were getting in the plane to go, another RV-10 pulled in to park next to us. It was great to see others start to arrive. When I got back at noon, there were a couple more RV-10's again. We went out to watch the Bonanza arrivals, which was pretty cool. Then I took off for a quick flight and when I came back there were now 8 total RV-10...and I was taxiing in behind Randy DeBauw and Rob Hickman. It was great to see Randy here again with his plane, and his wife Cheryl. I didn't have a camera to take a photo of the entire new lineup, and I didn't get out there in the late day to see if there were any further arrivals. The photo I have below is before Randy and Rob showed up, unfortunately.

Saturday night was the night of the first official RV-10 HQ cookout, and a good number of people were there. I won't even try to name them all, but you all should definitely come by and meet them over the week if you can. There are some with some very interesting stories to hear, and everyone is all very nice....I guess that's what you'd expect of our builder group though, eh? Other Non-RV10 folk to stop by were Stein and Jed from SteinAir, and Jeff Point who is a full-time volunteer in RV-10 parking that has been great for our RV-10 group to work with getting nice comfortable and safe spaces.

For those with kids 5-12, we're piling up a good group of kids for them to play with in the evenings, so bring them all by. We ended the night playing guitar hero under the stars, so everyone had a good time.

Our Day 4 - Sunday Pre-Show

Today was a great weather day. By the end of the day, we had 22 RV-10's on the field, some in camping and some in the Homebuilt Parking. Below are photos of all of them that I found. Scott and I started out the day with a quick flight out to play, and both had our individual curveball arrivals to fly with all the mess of traffic coming in. Seems that this year there are way too many planes that are flying far slower than 90kts on the arrival, so Scott and I have had times where we've been down to 75kts flying in. The field in the homebuilt areas has filled up to normal levels, and the General Aviation areas are filling up too, although it's hard to tell if the levels will be normal there yet. Everyone's wondering if fuel prices will drop attendance or aircraft count, but so far it's not had much impact on homebuilders....we're just too hardcore to give up.

Today was the start of our Volunteering slots for parking RV-10's. If anyone wants to volunteer their time, at least while there's supply they give you a free T-shirt. You just get a hold of one of the scooter dudes and meet them at the wooden shack just a couple rows forward from the RV-10's in parking. Fill out one form, grab your orange vest, and make sure no pilots smack their wings on anything as they taxi down the rows. Remember that this place runs on volunteers, so it's important to pitch in once in a while.

After lunch I took the kids out for a jaunt, taking a wrong turn at first that led us on a tour of Wisconsin. We ended up driving right by the guys at Fisk, identifying planes on the approach. They have an awesome viewpoint of the planes coming in! We were headed for a town called Redgranite, WI, where there's a quarry with very clear water and granite cliffs you can jump off. The water's warm and deep, and the kids had a great time jumping off. That was great refreshment. So if you're coming to OSH for a long stay on a hot week, check out Redgranite on HWY 21, only about a half-hour away. After we got back it was time to park planes for Scott and I, although none came into HBP during that time. Oh well. The fuel truck gave me a free gallon because they forgot to reset the ticker, so I made out with $5.44 of free fuel today...yee haw! The kids are thrilled because now their college education is back on track. :)

Our Day 5 - 7/28/08 - SHOW DAY START!

Starting the day by volunteering for the plane parking. Some of our crew filled in yesterday as well, thanks guys! I got lucky today and had 3 planes come in when Andrea and I were on duty. One taxiied back to camping (Ted French and his Canadian RV-10 in Yellow and Green), and the others were up in parking. If you're coming to OSH, you definitely need to stop and check out N410JA, which is serial number 40010 built by Don Orrick....it's got many little mods to it that are really pretty nice. It's got to be one of the nicest trimmed RV-10's I've seen, also, on the interior. I checked out a real small amount of the vendor areas of the show, and there is plenty of foot traffic this year. The Fly market is going full bore as well. As I was leaving the grocery store, a couple of pilots saw my RV-10 stuff on my van, and asked if I was going to the field so I gave them a ride. Turns out they flew in from Arizona (one of them came further) in a Tri Pacer....17 hours. You sure appreciate an RV-10 when you hear how other people have it. Anyway, they said that even their Vintage camping site got pushed way down the field because it was fuller than they expected. By all counts, it looks to be at least as many planes as usual. Andrea says she heard the announcer say that Monday was a record setting opening day. So attendance is great, and things are looking wonderful! Other than RV-10 photos, I took nothing today, so below are some photos my daughter took. If I could only get her to write web stuff, I could finally retire. :) (Actually, something tells me I'm not going to have a problem getting her to write web stuff. She's keeping an Oshkosh journal, so maybe I'll have her transpose it into HTML for everyone so that your kids can read)

Almost forgot....Today was the night of Foreigner in concert....the turnout seemed great, the crowd seemed excited, and the band put on a very good show! It's always great to hear songs you grew up with!

Our Day 6 - 7/29/08 - Tuesday

Well the Jetpack demo was a disappointment from all who I heard from, which almost makes me happy because I took the morning to do a flight with Robin Marks to pick up Ed Hayden, my great pal builder from Oregon. Ed's done with his plane and just awaiting the time to start the flyoff. He's got a Chelton panel like me, so we're going to have a fun time flying around while he's here. Our campsite is always a busy place, as my own site tonight will be up to 10 people, with the additon of my nephew and niece who'll be coming to visit. It's been a great week so far and the time is flying by fast. The RV-10 HQ folk have a Tuesday night cookout going on, so there is plenty of activity for builders to attend.

With the day nearly behind me now, I've got all the shopping done that I needed (not much, but I wanted some Simple Green Aviation forumula) and asked my questions I had for the vendors. Today was s sticky day in the heat, and there may be more to come this week. I didn't get out to the flightline to photograph any RV-10's arriving after about 10am, so if there are new ones I don't have photos. Here are some pics though of an airplane that could probably hold all of the attending RV-10's.

Our Day 7 - 7/30/08 - Wednesday

Wednesday was an awesome day for us. We started the day with a flight out with Scott for a little formation and photo flight, having a blast. We're going to have to get together away from OSH where we can play in less crowded skies, but we found ourselves a little piece of airspace and had a great time. Learning many new tricks we need to do to get better photos....unfortunately, we're learning them the hard way by not getting the greatest shots. Make sure your people aren't wearing light colored clothes, or that you have something to cover up your interior to make it dark. Anything light leaves reflections in the windows.

On the way in from the flight, Scott and crew flew right over the arriving formation of RV's that was doing a demo. Ed and I went out to a small and quiet local airport for some touch-n-go's to get a little practice in before the first flight. Once we got back to camp and tied up a couple of loose ends, it was a hot and humid day so we piled some of us in the cars and headed back to Redgranite Quarry for some cliff diving. It's an awesome swimming hole, and I think that from now on, we're going to make time every year for at least one or two trips over. It's only about 28 miles away...but being a 2 lane road filled with all sorts of turkeys it takes a bit over a half hour to get there.

There was a small fabric highwing that ground looped on the runway today. Not surprising, since we were getting shoved around quite well with fairly strong crosswinds. All of our touch-n-go's were challenging, and when we got back to OSH I had a smooth landing going until just before touchdown a big gust picked me up and transported me up and sideways for a few feet. The arrival was a success, however, leaving no parts on the runway. ;) Below are some photos of the airshow that I snagged from Scott.

Our Day 8 - 7/31/08 - Thursday

Today's starting out with great weather again. The sleeping weather has been awesome! Can't go to do the x/c that I wanted though, because the radar shows bad weather out to the West. It's been the best year so far, for me and the family. Decided to extend our stay by an extra day as well. The warbird airshow was disappointing during the week, not including any pyro....so we're sticking in out in hopes of some big explosions Saturday! The hard part is dealing with this scholler wi-fi. It's now starting to be down more than it is up...so this page won't be loaded for a while. Come ON, EAA, just give up on your page redirection and gateway, and just put in a few more AP's and a simple open network. People want wi-fi! We did get a 3rd day in at the swimming hole though, so that was good, and saw the Raptors at the show. All in all, less running around today and more relaxing.

Our Day 9 - 8/1/08 - Friday

Today I started the day taking Ed on a 3 hour x/c flight. Ed's got Cheltons like me, and is signed off and ready for his first flight, so we took the opportunity to do some x/c navigation and EFIS work....showing him how to use many of the cool features of the system. It was great to show him first-hand the performance in travel that the RV-10 can do...flying one way at 8,500' in the low 160kt range on 10gph, and flying back at 9,500' in the 158-160kt range on 9.5gph. You go higher, you burn less. On the return trip, the clouds were tall and billowy, and it was a great sight to see. After that it was time to walk around and see what my next project should be....sonnex, RV-12, RV-7, or what. ;) It's got to be something that someone can learn to fly in, but the RV-12 may be out because it's non-aerobatic. It's all a pipe dream for now, but certainly it's great to have goals. If I had the bucks, and the delivery was soon, I'd buy the Icon A5 as a 3rd plane...you'll have to check that one out. After that and a little walking around and eating, it was time to take Ed to the airport for his departure, and then return for dinner. Both Thursday night and Friday night we ended up at Fratello's waterfront restaurant...a great Italian place downtown. The service was fair, the speed was poor...real poor Friday, but the food was great. I did get one other very fun thing in now this week. After the airshow, we sat and watch departures for an hour or so. It's real cool, and Airventure has "flightline radios" now for $15 that you can get to listen to the airshow or the runway frequencies.

Our Day 10 - 8/2/08 - Saturday

Today we got up to watch some arrivals and departures. This year was the first year I took the time to do this, but it won't be the last. One of the most relaxing and fun times you can have is just kicking back with your pals and watching Joe-Blow pilot take off and land. The variety of airplanes, the performance or lack thereof, and the pilot skills all are neat things to watch. After that we packed up our site and got ready to head out before the show. The flight home was quiet, watching the ground go by, knowing it would be another year before it could all happen again.

OSH 2008 - Lessons Learned

This year was my best year at OSH yet, thanks to some great company, and my wonderful family. We arrived earlier than ever before, which turned out to be a major relaxing blast. We left on Saturday of the weekend show. Arriving Thursday night gave a lot of time to relax on Friday, as there isn't all that much going on, but there is excitement in the air. Logistically your travels in and out of the gate are simpler, and you will have more time to enjoy the people you are with. Saturday the incoming planes flow in faster and faster, and Sunday there is a rush of incomings. Sunday and Monday are the biggest days of arrivals. The sad fact though, is that by Wednesday or Thursday, the lines of planes start to empty. It's as if there are multiple types of attendees and they prefer not to overlap their times. What I realize after being there for at least 10 years now is, if you LOVE homebuilt airplanes, you NEED to come early in the week, and you need to stay at least 4 days...period. The true homebuilder should show up early or they're going to miss seeing all the other builder types. If you're someone who is just into the air show acts themselves, then perhaps the late part of the week would work ok....Friday and Saturday. These people think that all Airventure is about are some stunt planes doing tricks. It's SOOO much more than that though! Truthfully, the airshows are starting to become a little lacking in thrill...at least in my opinion. There are acts that were legendary in their times....Bob Hoover and the Shrike Commander, Wayne Handley and the Turbo Raven, the awesome but tragically lost "Masters of Disaster", and the Jet Waco, to name but a few of my old favorites. These heros aren't coming on the scene as fast as they've been leaving us, and even the Warbirds are fewer in number than 5, 6, or 7 years ago. To their credit, all of the people who flew in the show flew excellent acts. It's truly wonderful stuff. But, it's not all that Airventure is about. Airventure is about the people....the community, the togetherness with your favorite friends, and the opportunity to see things that you can't see anywhere else.

In past years, I spent lots of time by my plane. It was a burden I enjoyed, even with the pain of baking in the sun. People are eager to ask questions, and it's fun, to a point, to answer them all. Yeah, there's a lot of repetition....and no, nobody actually takes the time to read the Q&A cards posted in the planes windows so they don't have to ask all those same questions. But it's fun as a new flying builder to talk to all the people. I also enjoy going for flights, taking the opportunity to take aerial photos of your buddies planes. Yeah, flying in and out of OSH can be a pain, but if you find good purpose for the flight, it's well worth it.

But this year for me was an attempt to give some of the fun back to my friends and family as best I could.....involve myself in their enjoyment of Airventure, and simplify our time. To think that I could be available to all who I really wanted to see was a doomed plan from the start. A person can be spread pretty thin at OSH, and I tend to get that way easily. But I decided early on to just accept that I could not succeed in all my goals....after all, I was ONLY there 10 days! :) This year, however, left most everyone in my group feeling very satisfied. One of the biggest highlights, even for an awesome RV-10 builder couple we hung out with (Len and Zsofia), was taking the time off on a hot afternoon to go swimming. That's just something you can't do if you rush yourself through Airventure. We always looked ahead and saw that we had a few days left, so the rush of the other activities could wait. Nope, I didn't get to do all the things I wanted....heck, maybe not even half it seemed at times. But I managed to find something I haven't had for a long time....relaxation, despite the rush.

So if you're looking ahead to OSH 2009 like I am, think about what your goals are. If you're there to shop, you're going to need LOTS of time in the vendor booths....so plan a 5 day stay or more. If you're with family, slow down and enjoy it...stay a week. If you're a homebuilder looking to spend lots of time with friends, family, and see the whole deal....just get there well before the show and stay until it's nearly over...you'll be amazed at how short that time feels. Whatever you do, don't plan to go to OSH as a day trip...you'll never get what you want out of it, and you'll never learn what it's all about. It's just too big.

Sorry to those who I missed talking to, and thanks to all of you who said Hi and hung out for a few minutes....we'll be back next year for another 10 day week I'm sure!

OSH 2008

OSH 2008 - Lessons Learned

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