EAA AirVenture 2017

We are spending the week in Oshkosh, camping along with over 4,000 other RVs and tents. I found out that this aircraft convention is big in every sense - the number of campers, the number of attendees to the show, the number of planes, the number of forums/workshops/exhibits. It was overwhelming.  It took until the middle of the week for me to get a reasonable sense of how the displays and buildings were laid out.

We picked Chris up from the Amtrak station in Milwaukee after dropping our trailer off at the EAA campground. We originally had enough time to set it up, but there was a large class A that got stuck in part of our campsite and it was taking too long to get him moved. Worked out ok for us but I don't know what happened to the RV, it was gone when we got back.

The weather, for the most part, was clear, though very warm and humid. Didn't have a problem with bugs because I suspect they sprayed the area thoroughly before people started to show up.

Russ and Chris got up very early on Monday to try to get into a workshop which made a wing rib. Unfortunately, it was completely full by the time they arrived (the workshop was about a mile from our campsite.) The good news is it is offered every day of the convention, so I am sure they will get in.

We walked around, trying to get a sense of the size and location of the areas we wanted to explore. After the airshow including the balloon glow in the evening, we were tuckered out. Dinner was left overs and then to bed. It is a bit different having an extra person in the trailer, but everyone had a comfortable place to sleep.

There was so much going on, I am splitting this entry into a few parts. This one covers our arrival and the first day.

I forgot to change the mode for the camera (I had been using it to take pictures of documents), so the first few pics are black and white. I was expecting a huge line of RVs trying to check into the campground, but it wasn't bad at all.  Turns out that most of the rigs were already in the campground. We were one of the latecomers.

A large John Deere tractor showed up to pull the RV out of the big muddy hole it had created. The good thing was that the tractor did pull the RV out, the bad news was that, after the tractor left,  the RV driver almost immediately backed the RV right back into the hole. I personally thought the tractor should have pulled the RV into its site, not just out of the hole.  Oh well, they didn't ask me.

Chris chose not to be liberal in the application of sunblock and, as a result, sported a red sunburn for the rest of the week.  He didn't do that again. It was great weather for an airshow, a bit too bright for us pasty whites.

The airshow opened with a team of parachuters bringing the flag into the airshow grounds. These two actually went in vertical circles keeping the flag between them.

The most impressive display, for me, was the very large numbers of privately owned WWII vintage planes that flew in formation overhead. The entire airshow, save for the few Air Force modern planes, was organized and run by volunteers.

There were several formations, each coming from a different direction. I have never seen so many planes in the air at one time.

Several acrobatic acts were in the show.  I was amazed at how these planes seemed to dance across the sky, turning upside down and spiraling down, then climbing back up to crab crawl across the sky horizontally.  Generally, they are not big planes, weighing about 1200 pounds. They have very powerful engines which allows them to pull out of their turns.

The resident photographer was kept busy taking pictures.

This barnstormer sported a radial engine and a jet. So it went REALLY fast. As the plane would come towards us, it sounded like a regular piston engine plane, but as it went away, the jet sound would take over.  

This duo's thing was pulling an acrobatic stunt while trying to fly through these gigantic smoke rings.

They like to fly very close together doing these crazy stunts.

There was one wing walker act. She actually climbed up from the lower wing to the top spot.

These guys did their stunts in formation.  I have only seen that done with the Thunderbirds and Blue Angels.

Bet everyone can guess who designed this plane, named Proteus.  Built by Scaled Composites, Burt Rutan designed it for NASA to use as a high-altitude, long-duration telecommunications relay platform for experiments.

As the sun was setting, several balloons lifted up for a balloon glow display. Made me want to go to Albuquerque for the balloon festival.  Definitely on my bucket list.

The Civil Air Patrol was the first one up.  Pretty impressive watching them work as a team. 

The team looked like they were having fun, even the commanding officer.

The Air Force had a presence, not large because this convention is all about the citizen. This is an A-10, Warthog, which is a close air support vehicle.

A B1-B bomber did several pass overs and landed.  It will be on static display along with some other military planes for the week.

An F-35, the newest fighter to join the fleet, did several passes including some nice acrobatics.