Tag Archives: EAA

Oshkosh

Here we go with a short post for today.  EAA’s annual extravaganza that is Airventure (or Oshkosh to pretty much everyone else) has recently concluded.  I was there for GAR for a few of the days.  Oshkosh is a great experience and one that any aviation nut should try and do at least once.

There is way too much going on at Oshkosh to make a single blog posting out of it.  Instead, you will be getting bits and pieces drip fed over the coming posts.  My coverage of it for GAR also has to go out so I won’t be duplicating anything from there (well, not much anyway).  However, hopefully this will give you a few views of Airventure from my perspective.

Up front, I must say thanks to all of the friends I already have that I met there as well as the new ones I made.  Oshkosh is certainly something at which you can wander off for hours at a time to experience what is happening.  However, it is nice to be able to know you can expect someone to be around when you come back so you can share what you have been up to and talk rubbish about planes for ages.  Thanks everyone.

Not this year!

Two years ago, I made my first trip to Oshkosh for the EAA extravaganza that is Airventure. I have no idea why it took me so long to get there but there’d always been some work related reason why I hadn’t gone. I loved it. So much good stuff to see, plenty of space, even when shared with thousands of your closest friends, and more variety than you can imagine.

Last year it was sacrificed because I had made the quick trip to the UK for RIAT and, as it turns out, I missed the chance to get very wet. This year, timing was again tricky. It coincided with the last week of a consulting contract i have with a client so planning ahead was not easy. By the time it looked like I might be able to go, the chance of finding anywhere to stay within an hour of the event was minimal.

So, I am in Chicago, barely two and a half hours away but I am not going. This is a big disappointment to me but hardly something I can complain about. I have a bunch of friends there, (another reason for my disappointment) so I can hear how it all went but it won’t be first hand knowledge. No looking at unique aircraft, no watching some of them display, no chatting to people sitting under the wing of their pride and joy and no lounging by the lake at the seaplane base enjoying the tranquility that contrasts so much with the rest of Airventure.

Next year maybe. In the mean time, I will have to look back at some shots from two years ago.