Oshkosh B'Gosh

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Although most people associate Oshkosh with the famous denim overalls, it is also the site of one of the world’s biggest airshows. I’m not a pilot or have any real desire to become one but I am an aviation enthusiast and enjoy the beauty and technology behind manned flight. I usually try to go to one airshow a year just to satisfy my desire to see some cool aerobatics. This year I planned our vacation to Chicago to end the day before the start of the Oshkosh airshow then put my wife on a plane home and headed north to Oshkosh.

The Oshkosh airshow is put on by the EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association). This show started out as a bunch of pilots gathering to discuss and show off the best home built planes in the country. The show has been held every year for over 50 years and has grown in leaps and bounds. This year the attendance total will probably top over 700,000 people. This show is not only about home built planes but has become a world class airshow where you can come and see almost any plane that has ever been made. At the show I saw everything from Wright Model B to WWII Mustang to the Whiteknight II from Burt Rutan. If you love airplanes you owe it to yourself to get you ass to Oshkosh at least once in your life to experience airplane nirvana.

There are a lot of different aspects to the Oshkosh airshow. There are talks given on any aviation topic imaginable by the experts in the field, There are 10s of thousands of planes on display that you can look at and of course there is the daily airshow that show cases the best aerobatic pilots on earth. The scope and size of the show is overwhelming. It easily takes a few days to really see everything.

The highlight of the show was the arrival and demonstration flight of the Whiteknight 2 aircraft that was built by Scaled Composites for Virgin Galactic to carry SpaceShip 2 to 50,000 feet and air launch it into a ballistic trajectory to space. In the next 5 years this should allow a few hundred to a thousand people to fly into space and experience weightlessness for around 10 mins. This will be the beginning of the commercial space market and should start to allow the common man to experience space travel.

The other main highlight of the show was the arrival and demo flight of the new Airbus 380 the biggest plane in the world. The plane is huge but as the demonstration flight showed it is very maneuverable. The pilot did some very short turns and had the angle of attack at plus and minus 15 degrees. Nothing you would want to experience during a normal commercial flight but it was amazing how the nimble the big plane really was.

The amazing part of the show was the organization. Even with over 10’s of thousands of plane and 100s of thousands of people everything ran flawlessly. This was one of the cleanest places I have every seen and although it was crowded the wait for food or any other service was never very long. Also the service of every one of the staff from the bus drivers to the food service personnel was always friendly and professional. In fact they would go out of their way to do anything to make the event run more efficiently. For example when the air show let out the buses back to the camp ground (Where I was staying) were really packed as everybody was trying to get back to where they were staying.

Normally this would mean long lines and waiting times for buses but this was not the case. First they had a lot of buses which help but they also learn to run them more efficiently. After every one got on the bus they announced the stops they planned to make and asked who was getting off at each stop. If there were stops that no one needed they changed the route to eliminate that stop and get to the other ones quicker. All the bus drivers communicated to each other so that all the stops were always covered and they never missed picking any one up. It was a great system that was worked well and the most amazing thing was that it was an all volunteer system.

As I mentioned above I stayed in the camp ground. As you can imaged the small Wisconson town of Oshkosh is totally overwhelm by the hordes of people that attend the airshow. It is really hard to get a hotel room. However there is a huge field next to the airport where the airshow is held turns into a extremely large campground. My parents have a 5th wheel camper and were in the area so I meet them and stayed with them for the three days that I was there. The campground is a cross between a refugee camp and an army base. There were over 30,000 trailers, motor homes and tents here. It was an unbelievable site. The makeshift roads had a constant flow of traffic including, buses, bikes, scoters and people walking. It was chaotic, crowded and well organized all at the same time. Again the volunteers kept the camp really clean and their passion to help people was infectious because all the campers were really friendly and helpful. It was like living in a big commune and although I missed having my own private bathroom and shower it wasn’t a bad way to live for a few days.

This airshow attracts some of the best, brightest and even famous people. I attended talks by Sir Richard Branson, Harrison Ford (besides being an actor he is also a helicopter pilot), Miles O’Brien and Burt Rutan just to name a few. The best talk I went to was with Richard Branson and Burt Rutan where they explained how within a few years they plan to be flying people on sub orbital flights to space. I believe they will not only be able to do it but actually make money at it.

The Oshkosh airshow was one of those rare events which I had high expectations which were exceeded by the actual experience. I saw a lot of cool planes and learned a lot about the future advances of aviation.

The only thing that damped my high from attending the airshow was the flight home.. My 225 pm flight from O’Hare ended up leaving over 2 hours late because of bad weather at Newark. So although the future of aviation is bright they need to work a little harder to find a way to make the airlines run on time when it rains.