Oshkosh 2005

Flying my RV-8 to Oshkosh is right up there with the first flight -- major milestone. Several weeks prior to the start of Airventure there were grand plans of making the trip with Pam and several other planes. Reality, schedules, and logistics got in the way of those ideas.

So, the Saturday before Oshkosh started, I forged out on my own. I climbed above the North Carolina haze and made good time over the mountains and stopped for relatively cheap fuel at Putnam County, IN before continuing on through Illinois. Southwest of Chicago I started to run into some weather, and ended up stopping twice in IL before things cleared and I could press on for OSH. I got to Ripon, WI (the initial fix for OSH arrivals) about ten minutes before OSH stopped taking arrivals for the night. Just in the nick of time, or so I thought. Everyone was holding over the lakes while a disabled aircraft was removed from the runway. So I got in line with them, did two laps, and they closed the field for the night. Shoot. Off to Fond du lac I go. Not too big of a deal, except there are about 15 of us. All headed for the same spot, and there is no sort of air traffic control (the temporary control tower at Fond du lac was not open yet). It was busy to say the least!! In the end, I was on the ground and parked with a couple minutes of daylight left to set up the tent. I wasn't parked at Oskkosh, but I was still thrilled at the progress made in one day.

The next morning I broke camp and readied for the quick flight over to Oshkosh. Things went as they were suppose to, more-or-less. The planes I was following for runway 27 were flying a huge pattern, out over the lake shore, but there wasn't much I could do but follow them. The controllers didn't address me, until I was about to touch down near the numbers. No "Land on the green dot", or anything, just "Exit into the grass ASAP". I had a round-about taxi to homebuild camping, and there I was...AT OSHKOSH! Seven years in the making!

After a couple days of hanging out, meeting with friends, making new ones, answering questions, bailing rain water out the tent, etc, it was time to go. I left Oshkosh for Madison, WI to visit family for the afternoon, and then to West Bend, WI for more visiting and to stay the night. This sort of schedule is only possible with an RV. :)

July 28th I left WI for NC. I had a nice flight along the shore of Lake Michigan, passing east of Chicago, and onto my planned fuel stop in Ohio. Shortly after that is where the plan started to fall apart. As I near the mountains the weather got worse and worse. I ended up spending the next couple days waiting on the weather. The first night I spent in Jackson, KY. Thanks to the kind folks at the NWS post there who helped me out. The next day I made some small progress towards home, and ended up running into Jack and Al (regulars at my home-base of 8A7). They were also trying to get back home after going to Oshkosh with their Kit Fox's. We spent the night in Abingdon, VA. Finally, on the third day we made it to the other side of the mountains. Even then it took a couple hours of waiting to go the last thirty miles. I ended up making back with a couple hours to spare before the concert I had planned to attend with Pam.

In the end, I put 13.1 hours on the plane that week, and the GPS said I covered almost 1900 NM. This is a little more than I would have thought because it's only 610 NM each way direct. I guess all the side trips and weather deviations add up. My route of flight for the week was 8A7-4I7-VYS-C73-FISKE-FLD-OSH-C29-ETB-AMT-I32-JKL-K20-VJI-UKF-INT-8A7