Oshkosh, Saturday and Sunday

Saturday was another good day. Sunday has been a bit of a let down.

Saturday was good for lots of reasons--good weather, a productive hour and a half at the Authors' Corner, another great airshow and lots more walking around--but Saturday was also good because Tom Jacobs, an ATA First Officer and International pilot who used to fly with me a lot on the Hawaiian turns, showed up at the Authors' Corner, with his father, an aeronautical engineer. And I also meet up with another old friend from ATA, Bill Leeds, Lt. Col. AF (Ret.) and a fellow L-1011 and later 757 captain in San Francisco. Bill had major heart surgery three years ago and was looking great. Also, funny and charming as ever. It was great to catch up with these old friends and introduce them to my family.

Sunday was a let down because Sunday seems to be "Get out of town" day. I got to the airport just after 9am, and probably half of the aircraft were gone already, and most of the rest left before the airshow which started early, 2pm. It was still a nice way to finish up--no crowds with a nice cool breeze. I walked all the way down to the end of runway 36 and discovered a separate area for ultralights with its own grass strip. Even on the last day you can find new things.

The highlight of the airshow today was the Aeroshell three ship acrobatic team of T-6s'. (The T-6, or SNJ for the Navy, "Harvard" for Canada, was the most common primary trainer in WWII and there are still a lot around.) These guys were real pros and I always find acrobatics with more than one aircraft so much more interesting than single ship demonstratinons. The single ships can do more extreme maneuvers because they don't have to worry about aircraft around them, but I find them to be a little repetitious after a while. But three aircraft doing complex formation flying is always thrilling.

The photo about shows the team diving straight down into a three way split at the bottom. Pretty impressive.

Oshkosh, Friday

We got a late start Friday (birthday party the night before plus some people still on California time), but made up for it after that. I gave the new arrivals an orientation tour--the show is so big, you hardly know where to start otherwise. Most of us toured a restored Piedmont Airlines DC-3 (photo above) which was flown in by the Carolina Air Museum. They asked for a dollar donation, "To help pay for the 800 gallons of gas we'll need to get back." A really nice restoration.

Then we picked our spots for the air show which was highlighted by a limited demonstration flight of the F-22 Raptor, the newest air superiority fighter. The F-22 does everything the F-15 does, except faster, slower, tighter, and stealthier. The demonstration was limited because Oshkosh doesn't have a big enough "box"--protected airspace--for a full demo, but it was still very impressive. On takeoff, it points straight up for two thousand feet or so, until it comes to what seems like a complete stop, then, incredibly, pitches straight ahead to level flight and accelerates away, a sort of upside down L pattern. If you don't know airplanes, it's kind of a "so what." If you do, you can't believe your eyes.

Then there was a "Warbirds on Review" show, a series of fly-bys and overhead formation passes for every kind of warbird, from L-19 Birddogs to B-24 bombers, with lots of ground pyrotechnics to simulate an airfield under attack. Very impressive. All the kids watched with their hands over their ears, but I noticed that during an kind of lull in the action, they all had little model airplanes in their hands which they ran around with shooting their brothers' and sisters' airplanes down.

The only hitch in the day was a line of thunderstorms that went through that, fortunately, missed the airfield but threatened to cancel the show. I even saw some nasty looking stuff coming out of the bottom of one, scratchy patches of clouds swirling in circles, but nothing developed. When we got back to the house though, the outdoor umbrella was on the ground and turned out to have a broken strut. The neighbor said there was only one big gust, but it was enough to launch it 15 feet or so. So I owe the owner a new umbrella. It was worth it.

Oshkosh, Wednesday and Thursday

Wednesday was an off day--Rusty and I played golf with another friend, Ron Galbraith, a retired Denver Center controller and Master Certified Flight Instructor. (There are only 600 MCFIs' in the country, versus something like 90,000 CFIs'.) He is also a 4 handicap golfer (that's very, very good) and was very patient with us.

Thursday started off with the Master Instructors' Breakfast, which I was lucky enough to attend as Rusty's (see "Prelude to Oshkosh) guest. The Acting FAA Administrator, Bobby Sturgell, talked and handed out some awards, as did Hal Shever, founder and CEO of Sporty's Pilot Shop and an Aviation Hall of Fame honoree. Sporty's is a major sponsor of EAA.

After that I checked out the retail exhibitors--four huge hangars full--wandered around the outdoor exhibitors, which are mostly aircraft manufacturers, and then went to Authors' Corner. There was more traffic today, and I sold a few books. An ATA pilot, Loren Madison, stopped by and reminded me of a trip we did together on the 1011 to Edinburgh and what a good time we had. He also caught me up on some people we knew in common at ATA's. So all in all that was a very successful hour and a quarter.

Thursday was also my wife's birthday and we had a great time that evening with both daughters here, Hilary and Nicole, Hilary's boyfriend Matt, and Rusty. Thursday was the best day so far.