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EAA 2007 AirVenture

(A.K.A. The Osh Kosh Fly-In)

I flew out with two other members of the flying club. Rather than deal with the busy airspace at the Osh Kosh airport itself (KOSH), we opted to fly into the Appleton, Wisconsin airport, Outagamie County Airport (KATW). Others from the flying club flew out to Fond Du Lac

Below is a description of the trip out and back and some of the things I saw at the show. Since this is in the "Flying" section of my web site rather than the "Pictures" section, it will contain a lot more blow-by-blow description of the flying aspects, rather than just pictures.

Click on the thumbnail images to get larger ones (around 100-300K). Click on the "huge" link to get the full size pictures (around 3M).
Around 80 pictures included.

The first stop: KHYX, Saginaw, Michigan

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We got to the airport a little after 7am. Tim and Eric did the preflight inspection and I made and filed the flight plan got the weather briefing. In general, the weather was decent. Using the scale in the flying club, we were pleased to discover that with all the junk we were taking (including ourselves), at full fuel we were still under max gross weight (by 7 pounds).

The first picture shows Eric loading baggage into the baggage compartment. The second picture is of the three of us, taken with the camera sitting on top of a step ladder (that's used to get to the fuel tank on top of the wing).

We picked up our clearance and taxied to the run-up area. We were cleared "as filed" and Eric commented that we must be lucky to get that. After the runup, ground control called and said, "we have an ammendment to your clearance, advise when ready to copy." Ooops, I guess he spoke too soon. The ammendment was pretty simple. Instead of direct to Buffalo, they put us on an airway near Ithaca, then to Geneseo VOR (GEE), then Buffalo VOR (BUF), then as filed.

We took off around 8:45am, perhaps 30 minutes late, but generally in the ballpark of what we planned.

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I was in the left seat, Eric was in the right seat, and Tim was in the back seat. Eric is a flight instructor, so he is comfortable flying from the right.

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A few photos of the "crew." I need to photoshop something in the windscreen of the second photo.

I should also mention that 3 other people from the flying club were flying to Osh Kosh as well, in a Mooney, which is a good bit faster than a Skyhawk. They were leaving after us though. Near Buffalo, Buffalo approach tells us that there is traffic 1000 feet below us that will be passing us. They also tell the other plane that there is traffic 1000 feet above them. We each acknowledge visual contact of the other plane, and David, in the other plane, asks approach if he can talk to us (which is approved) and says a quick hello and goodbye. They pass us.

Buffalo hands both of us off to Toronto Center. Toronto then has the Mooney climb to our altitude. At this point, they are already past us and probably flying at 160 knots to our 120. They climb about as fast as we cruise. Toronto then asks me our speed. I tell him it's 120. (Did I mention we had a tailwind heading westbound? Well, we did.) He asks if I'm "happy with it." While I wanted to say something snide like, "I'd be happier if we were going faster," instead I tell him that it's as fast as we can go, and since we're getting a tailwind push that I am, in fact, happy with that. He asks the Mooney their speed, which is 120 or so and they were almost at the level off point (i.e., about to speed up).

The controller then says, "Cessna 3045" (it's usually "53045" or "045" for short, I must admit I'm not used to 4 digit call signs, but it is a foreign contry and they probably do some things differently there), "maintain at or below 120 knots. Mooney XYY" (or whatever their callsign was) "maintain at or above 120 knots."

A speed restriction. Only once before have I had a speed restriction placed on me, and that was when I was in a Mooney, in a descent, heading into a terminal area. I've been requested to "keep your speed up" or "best speed to the runway" in busier airspaces. But now I'm in a Cessna Skyhawk and I'm restricted to flying 120 or less. That's a first. A Skyhawk with a speed restriction so it doesn't "overtake" a Mooney. That's like a VW Bug being told not to overtake a Porche. It's just not going to happen.

At one point I noticed the GPS was showing we were doing 125 over the ground. I was tempted to say something snide, or possibly file a NASA ASRS (Aviation Safety Reporting System) form (it's the form you fill out if you unintentionally violate a Federal Aviation Regulation, which explains what happened and can often reduce or eliminate the penalty) for flying too fast in a Skyhawk. But again, I'm not looking to cause myself trouble. After a few minutes, the controller lifted the speed restriction. "Phew, thanks...it was getting tough holding her back, she really wants to go." Actually, I think I just pollitely said "thanks."

From Buffalo onward, there were some clouds below us, and we got about a half hour of "actual" time (flying in the clouds).

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We crossed back into Michigan. Midwest flatness. While hills look cool, the regular farmland patterns are kind of neat, and it's kind of nice to know that there are a LOT of options for emergency landing sites.

Once we descended a few thousand feet we were well below any clouds and cancelled our IFR clearance once we had the airport in site.

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Saginaw Brown County airport is a small, non-towered field a bit east of the main Saginaw airport. After an uneventful landing (though not my best) we taxied to the fuel pump.

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We put in 28 gallons of fuel, pushed the plane away from the pump on the ramp, and then sought lunch.

Next stop: Appleton, Wisconsin

One guy walked by and said, "Oooooh, IFR charts, uh oh" in a tone of voice that sounded almost intimidated by the charts. Earlier, he mentioned he had flown over the lake a few times. Once, because of the low clouds, he crossed the lake at around 200 feet. First, a little review. At 8000 feet, we could glide about 15 miles if the engine failed. The narrowest point in the lake is around 40-45 miles wide. That meant that for 10 - 15 miles we would be beyond gliding distance of land and would have to ditch in the water. This is not an ideal situation. But it's a small time window. And we had PFDs (life preservers) on board. And we would be in radar contact continuously. There is a "Lake Reporting Service" in which you call them every 10 minutes and if you're 5 minutes overdue, they launch a search and rescue. However, with VFR flight following or an IFR clearance, ATC will continuously monitor the plane's position, which is preferable to a 15 minute old report. And finally, we were flying over a route that ferries take, so in theory, someone might be in the vicinity underneath us.

We had done a good bit of planning for this extended overwater route, including getting flying club approval for the flight. This guy ("yahoo" shall we say?) had flown it casually, at an extremely low altitude. At 200', there would be perhaps 20 seconds to decide where to land in case of engine problems (which would be "in the lake"). No time for a radio call, no time to look for boats. No time to get (though not put on) a life preserver. We smiled, thanked him, and then ignored anything else he had to say.

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Eric flew the next leg, from the right seat, since he was comfortable with that. Eric is IFR rated but not current. Since I was instrument current, I would be responsible for the flight when we were in the clouds. We figured that en route he could fly as long as I kept a watch on things. If we had to do an actual instrument approach, then I would take over.

It wasn't "hard IFR" mostly in and out of the occasional cloud and some flight on top. At times no horizon was visible, other than the cloud tops. I took a few picutres as we were going in and out of IMC. The flight went smoothly.

We had filed to the Manitowac airport just on the western edge of the lake because Appleton required a reservation if flown IFR, but nothing other than a call at least 10 miles out and leaving the landing light on if flown VFR. So about halfway over the lake, ATC gave us the instruction to "descend at pilot's discretion and maintain 4000 feet." That was nice of them, as it was our discretion to stay high until we were within gliding distance of the shore. We started our descent around 15 miles out, and once we were comfortably close to the shoreline, we cancelled the IFR clearance.

It is about 20 miles due west to Appleton. The Appleton airport is at the north end of Lake Winnebago. Osh Kosh is in the middle of the west side of the lake, and Fond Du Lac is at the south end (the people in the Mooney were going to Fond Du Lac). We switched to he control tower's frequency and called them up about 15 miles out. It was VFR though not great visibility, perhaps 7 miles. And to the left (south) we noticed some weather (darker clouds, rain). The airspace was not at all crowded. We heard only a couple of other planes in the area.

Eric used to live in Appleton and was familiar with the airport (although apparently the rest of the area has changed significantly in the 11 years since he lived there, lots of development and expansion). He made a nice landing and then requested parking in the grass. The tower told us to look for directions from someone at the edge of the taxiway. We saw him, and he directed us on the grass and to another person, who pointed us to someone else, who marshalled us to the parking place. We should the engine down within 3 minutes of touching down.

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One of the people there gave us a form to fill out that specified if we need fuel, and what type if so, oil, and how long we'll be parking and a contact phone number. We attached the red form to our propeller, as seen in the picture.

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While the airspace was not busy, there were a lot of planes parked on the grass. The first picture gives a glimpse of one area. The second shows Eric unloading our bags from the plane.

Another plane pulled in near our plane. As we were unloading, the parking people said that another plane was going to be arriving and asked if we could help push the plane that just shut down into its parking spot. Before I could do anything, Tim, Eric, and a few others helped push that one into its parking place, as shown in the third picture.

We tied down our plane (we brought stakes and rope, they had a mallet they loaned us) and got a ride to the terminal. While waiting for our ride to Osh Kosh at the FBO, it started to rain heavily. I wouldn't have wanted to fly in that weather, and it wasn't forecast. Fortunately, we made it ahead of the weather.

We got a ride to Osh Kosh, and after a little circumnavigating the air show, we found our way to the house where we were staying. They put cots in their garage and fill the place with Osh Kosh people. The house is about a block away from the main entrance. The location is great.

The Osh Kosh Fly-In

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I slept on a cot in the garage with around 20 other people. It wasn't bad, there were fans going that kind of masked a lot of the noise, and I was really tired. Nonetheless, I woke up fairly early, as people were moving around and it was light out. So I got up and walked outside. I hadn't really looked closely at things before.

Their yard had a manicured lawn with various bird feeders. And now there were tents, campers, RVs, and other things parked there as shown in the picture.

In the front yard, about 8 cars were parked on the lawn. But the cool thing is that the airport area is just beyond the trees in the picture (there is a small fence separating us and them). Technically, I think it's the EAA Museum. The next few pictures show what you can almost see through the trees in the above picture.

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Just beyond the little fence was a hot air balloon. But it had no gondola, just a keg of (natural?) gas. They weren't giving rides. The closest was that they let one guy sit on the keg for a moment, shown in the first picutre.

Then a guy in a helmet straddled the gas keg like he was riding a horse and fired it up, as shown in the second and third pictures. The balloon had ropes coming off of it attached to weights and they were held by two guys so it wouldn't fly too high. The pilot floated to about 10-15 feet above the group and drifted a little to the right. There were a series of cones (visible in the pictures) that were some sort of track or area for him.

This, in essence, captures the spirit of the EAA and of Osh Kosh itself. It's the spirit of crazy inventors, of a love of aviation, and of the build-it-yourself hands-on creator. And as crazy as it looked, it also looked kind of fun. And he had thought of safety issues, as he had a helmet and two people to help keep things from getting out of hand.

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David and I walked to the main entrance (about a 5 minute walk or less) bought tickets and headed in. David, being a Master CFI, had a breakfast meeting with the FAA Administrator. We split up and I started wandering around.

The first picture is just inside the front entrance. Shortly after walking around a little it started to rain. I found a tent to duck under so I could wait for the storm to pass. At one point, I noticed a rainbow, which can be faintly discerned in the second picture.

I wandered around to the war plane area. The third picture shows a line of "war-birds" parked on Runway 04 (only Runways 9/27 and 18/36 are used).

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While walking around the war plane area, I noticed a modern jet idling in the distance on a taxiway (perhaps it's a Harrier?), and taxiing past it back to the airport was a Ford Tri-Motor (made from 1925 - 1933). Currently there are 18 of them left, and only a few of the flyable. It's not easy to see in the first picture, but the that's what it is with the Tri-Motor on the right.

One of the roads had a sign that read "Caution: Active Taxiway." It was what the planes that were coming in and going out were using. It also had automobile traffic on it. And pedestrians. It was a very active taxiway. There were EAA volunteers that watched the crossing points, to try to keep people safe.

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There was a raised viewing platform in the middle of the area where the home-built planes were parked. I took two pictures, the first looking north and the second looking south, to give a general sense of how many planes were there. This is only a fraction of one parking area. I heard they typically get 10,000 - 12,000 planes at Osh Kosh.

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The war planes were at the north west area of the show. South of that is the control tower. It was built in the 1960s. Near it the airport is building a new control tower. It is the stump in all three pictures, just to the left of the control tower. And in front of it is a welcome/entrance sign (though it's in the middle of the airport, so it probably is welcoming arriving flyers). Note that Osh Kosh has a control tower but does not have any airline traffic (anymore). That's an impressive amount of traffic.

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"Aeroshell Square" is the center of the show. And on the ramp in the middle of the square was a C-5 Galaxy cargo plane. It's enormous. They had a cart hooked up to it to push it back on the ramp. It took off in the middle of the airshow towards the end of the day. The front and back ends of the plane pop open. Did I mention it's a big plane?

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There are many seminars. I heard the tale end of one by Bud Anderson of WWII stories. Then I attended one by Dick Rutan on being a Fast Forward Air Controller during Vietnam by the Ho Chi Min Trail. He was a good speaker and it was a fascinating, though disturbing story. I heard another talk by Jim Terpstra who was the GPS approach designer at Jeppesen before retiring recently.

All of those seminars were interesting and fun. And then I tried to figure out where location #33 was on the map. Stopping at an information booth, another group was asking the same question. We all wanted to see Chuck Yeager. Hell, all pilots want to be Chuck Yeager.

Finally we found the place and he arrived shortly after that. He talked about the P-51 Mustang, a WWII fighter. It was impressive, as he is a legend.

Before it started, I met up with Eric and Ron (who had driven to Osh Kosh from Ithaca). We went to lunch afterwards, catching up with David and Tim. Yeah, the whole posse was here.

The air show

After lunch it was getting close to the start of the air show so we found a spot on the grass, next to some parked planes, that had a good view of the main runway (Runway 18/36), and watched the show.

On a side note, on the following day, Saturday, there was a collision between two P-51 Mustangs as they were landing in formation that resulted in a fatal crash for one of the planes. I wasn't at the airshow that day.

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Once we staked out an area, we watched the planes while generally lying around on the grass. The first picture shows Ron and me watcing the show with Tim lying on the grass in the background. In the second picture, David is enjoying a brief nap while resting under the tail of a plane, lying in its shadow to keep cool out of the sun. In the third picture, Ron is taking a picture of some plane flying in the airshow.

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More shots of us relaxing and taking in the show. The first includes Eric and Tim, the second has Ron standing taking another photo. In the third, you can see the plane leaving a smoke trail behind it. I rather like that shot.

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Two shots of Ron (standing) and Eric and Tim resting during the show. The plane in the background is the one under which David was sleeping. It's an amphibious plane with the engine and propeller mounted up high and behind the cockpit.

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After all the various small planes, a C-17 Globemaster 3 cargo plane came in. It did several passes around the field and a touch-and-go too. Then it demonstrated its short field landing abilities. It can land in 3500 feet or less, and it did. It was amazing to see it fly that slow and then stop that quickly. Then it backed up using reverse thrust. Cool plane. The pictures show it after landing, when it taxied in and shut down.

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Ron, David, Tim, and Eric and Ron, David, Tim, and Frank are shown in the two pictures while we were out to eat at an Osh Kosh restaurant. Free glass of beer with each meal.

Nick's (former) Hangar

This was very cool. While the show is filled with wall-to-wall people, the rental hangers are pretty quiet. It was a great place to watch things from a different angle while having free food and drink.

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iThe first shot was taken from the edge of the hangar, showing a few people watching the show. The second and third showed planes parked on the grass, just beyond the ramp by the hangar.

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The first shot is the daily air show in progress. Then a picture of David, Eric, and Tim, and then David, Eric, and Frank by the hangar. Yes, that's Tim's beer I'm holding.

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Finally, a couple pictures of the group, Tim, Eric, Frank, and David, with the air show going on in the background. There are some verticle wisps of smoke trails that can be seen in the clouds.

The show after the air show

(A.K.A. Watching the Osh Kosh departures)

We took some chairs and sat in the grass beyond the ramp beyond the hangar, maybe 30 feet from the taxiway, with the east/west runway just beyond that. Someone had a handheld radio and we listened to the control tower and watched the huge line of planes leave. That was one of the most interesting things to see.

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The first picture shows the line of planes all waiting to leave. You can see that there is very little gap between them. The runway is probably a mile beyond the plane at the end of the line. Many of them are still on the grass. The paved taxiway was used for some of the bigger planes (turboprops and jets). It was an incredible mixture of planes that were departing: Cessnas and Pipers, Mooneys and Bonanzas, the occasional business jet and King Air turbo prop, P-51 Mustang and other WWII planes, aerobatic planes, bi-planes, and more. There were flagmen standing and in vehicles that help direct the ground traffic and can be seen in the first picture.

THe second and third shows us in our seats (Eric, David and Tim, and Eric, Frank, and Tim) watching the show.

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At one point, we heard the tower controller say, "Sean Tucker flight of five, position and hold on Runway 9." Sean Tucker is one of the top airshow performers in the world. The controller said something like "Thanks for coming, Sean, you did a great job" and Sean replied that he enjoyed being here. Normally, the procedure at Osh Kosh is that communication is one way, the tower talks and the pilot listens (and complies). But, if the tower addresses you by name, I think it's fair game to reply.

The first picture shows Sean's Oracle Challenger bi-plane departing. The second and third show two other (support) planes for his crew in his "flight of five."

The trip back

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These pictures show the Appleton airport, as we were departing.

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And more shots of the Appleton airport.

Eric flew the first leg. After departing Appleton (VFR) we headed east towards Lake Michigan. We called up Green Bay approach to get flight following. The controller said to call back in about 5 minutes. He had a few planes he was directing, but he wasn't that busy. But that was fine. We monitored the frequency, and he refused a couple of other VFR requests, and gave one person heading east over the lake the Minneapolis Ceneter frequency, which we wrote down. As we got closer we tried again, to no avail. We were considering our options at that point.

We could use the Lake Reporting System, in which we call flight service every 10 minutes to give a position report and tell them we haven't crashed yet. If we're sufficiently late on a report, they'll start to look for us based on the last report. We could get VFR flight following, which keeps us in constant radar contact with an ATC facility and allows us to report problems immediately. However, VFR flight following is provided based on the controller workload. If they're busy, they don't have to offer that service, and it seemed likely the Green Bay controller was busy (enough). We could go IFR which forces ATC to provide radar services to us. However, if the controller was too busy to accept VFR flight following, he probably would be too busy to accept an "IFR pop-up" clearance. That means we'd have to call flight service, file an IFR flight plane in the air, then call the controller and get the clearance. That would work, but we'd be over the lake by the time that happened, or more realistically, we'd be circling over the edge of the lake for 10 minutes as we did that.

So we tried Minneapolis Center. They immmediately accepted the request and we could proceed over the lake with no delays. Once we were over Michigan, Minneapolis Center passed us to an approach control (Grand Rapids?) and after a while they told us that the next approach control (Saginaw?) was not accepting a handoff so our flight following was terminated. The frequency was pretty quiet, so it was surprising that they couldn't take us, but that was fine.

We stopped at the Owosso Community Airport (RNP), near Flint, MI for lunch and fuel. The Mooney was there, getting ready to to start up (we had planned to stop at the same airport, though we had no plans to coodinate, since they were a good bit faster than us).

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The restaurant, The Crosswinds Cafe, on the field was a cute little airport restaurant, nothing fancy, but still had its own appeal. David took a picture with his camera of us in front of the restaurant.

After lunch, I filed an IFR flight plan, so we could overfly Canada. While the only requirement for overflight is to be in contact with ATC and have a discrete transponder code, seeing how the other controllers were "too busy" to accept VFR traffic, I didn't want to spend time circling the eastern edge of Michigan waiting for them to accept my request for flight following.

We left Owosso, called up Flint Approach and got the clearance and then headed onward. The flight was uneventful. Oh, and just as we had a tailwind heading west, we had a headwind heading east. Unusual, but I suppose it's fair.

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I'm not sure where these pictures were taken, possibly Candada near Niagra Falls.

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A shot of Niagra Falls in the distance, and then Frank flying with the falls in the distance. And finally, after landing back home in Ithaca, Cessna Skyhawk N53045 back in the East Hill Flying Club hangar.

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