Oshkosh Reflections and Tips for Next Time

by philg

EAA’s AirVenture (“Oshkosh”) was packed in 2018, no mean feat in what is supposedly a dying industry. Airplane parking at KOSH and general aviation camping were both full by Monday afternoon, the first official day of the event (a lot of folks arrive early).

My companions laughed at me for making an IFR reservation for our arrival. After we landed we heard about people who had been forced to hold for literally hours trying to get in on Saturday or Sunday (a lot of marginal VFR weather resulted in bottlenecks). IFR reservations via STMP aren’t that tough to get, even same-day, due to the fact that people make them and don’t confirm. We went out IFR as well.

If flying in and camping, my advice would be to arrive Wednesday evening or Thursday morning. By then a lot of campers have departed and some prime spots become available. You would still have four full days to enjoy the event. Make sure not to miss the night airshow, which is Wednesday and Saturday evenings. We were awed by Nathan Hammond doing aerobatics in an LED-festooned fireworks-launching Super Chipmunk. Like Burning Man, but without the dust storms!

One question that we couldn’t answer from EAA’s web site was “How do we park a car if we’re airplane camping at Oshkosh?” A friend drove in from Chicago and met us in our tent site. It turned out that the folks collecting the money for our camp site asked “Do you need a parking space for a car?” and for $10/day we got one right next to the beginning of the North 40. This was helpful for escaping “show food” at Manila and Gardina’s. It was also a pleasant way to get to the seaplane base.

We met several people who’d had mobile phones stolen from the charging stations distributed around the camp sites. The smart folks (i.e., not us) arrived with portable phone chargers so that they could charge a battery and keep their phones with them. Another dumb thing that we did was bring our own payload-robbing tie-down kit. EAA rents far better ones for use at the show for $20 ($30 minus $10 when returned). (The tie-down guys will also graciously let you charge a phone inside their shack, secure from the roving thieves!)

EAA does a remarkable job of keeping traffic moving during the show. Nonetheless, given the vagaries of flying in and the hassles of getting to and from the show by private car, I think the most sensible approach might be to stay in a University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh dorm room and catch the bus or an Uber to the center of EAA. Given that there are nonstop flights from everywhere in the U.S. to Chicago, it is a 2.5-hour drive from O’Hare Airport, and it is kind of nice to have a car at Oshkosh, there is no great argument to be made for flying in unless you’ve got an unusual plane to show off (our Avidyne-equipped Cirrus turns out to be one of 4,000 built!).

We paid up for the EAA Aviators Club (about $135 per day), which serves meals in an air-conditioned super-tent. We figured that it would be a necessary escape from the 95-degree heat and the crush of show crowds. 2018 turned out to be a relatively cool and comfortable year, however, and we got sick of the club buffet food pretty quickly. It was noisy inside the tent and it wasn’t difficult to get equally good seats for the airshow (if you were willing to carry folding chairs!). The owners’ lounge that Cirrus ran within its pavilion was actually a much better place to chill out, though it had no view of the flight line. On the third hand, it was nice to be able to charge our phones at the Aviators Club without worrying about having them stolen! And it was a convenient place to meet, pick up a cold seltzer, etc.

Interesting destinations we learned about…

  • National WASP Museum in Sweetwater, Texas (unfortunately no parking on their ramp; why can’t there be more fly-in museums?)
  • Dakota Territory Air Museum in Minot, North Dakota (some interesting warbirds that rotate through, plus a large permanent collection)

Interesting products that we saw…

  • aural angle of attack project
  • Flight Flix camera mounts. The example videos are impressively stable. The isolation is provided via an elastomer mount.
  • Nulite ring lights that replace the hideous and uneven post lights in steam gauge aircraft such as Pipers and Robinsons (though I’m sure that Robinson would rip them right back out during a factory overhaul!)
  • Dynon D3 Pocket Panel ($995 glass panel that does nearly everything that a $50,000 Garmin option package on a VFR-only Robinson R44 will do, and with essentially equivalent safety or that a $350,000 retrofit King AeroVue glass cockpit does in a King Air)

If the success of EAA AirVenture proves that general aviation isn’t dead, the pace of innovations for products on display proves that the general aviation industry is more or less dead. BendixKing is a great example of corporate suicide. They have an enormous installed base of transponders. Do they make a plug-compatible ADS-B IN/OUT replacement? No. They make a transponder that is ADS-B OUT only. So all of their customers are getting avionics shops to rewire for the Garmin 345. Why couldn’t BendixKing read the full ADS-B spec and implement it? Something that the portable electronics folks have managed to do for a few hundred dollars? Their folks at the show had no answer to this, though they acknowledged that they were losing customers every day to Garmin.

Avidyne is another good example of corporate suicide. They made roughly 4,000 PFD/MFD glass cockpits for Cirrus aircraft until the OEM switched to the Garmin G1000. Do they have an “in-the-box” solution for -G2 Cirrus owners that will put synthetic vision into the PFD and some ADS-B capabilities on the MFD? No. What are their customers doing? Converting to Garmin in a piecemeal fashion (soon it will be as tough to get maintenance for a Cirrus as for an old Cessna or Piper because the shop won’t have any idea what to expect for panel contents and wiring).

Speaking of suicide, how dangerous is it when 10,000 aircraft fly into a handful of airports in a small region for a week? KOSH supposedly saw 19,588 operations during an 11-day period (roughly 135 per hour during the 13 hours per day of official open time, so fairly close to a normal day at five-runway KATL (2,460 operations/day on average)). The NTSB database shows only four accidents in all of Wisconsin from July 1 through August 1, 2018. One of them was fatal, that of a 1950s DeHavilland Venom fighter jet. Some planes crashed before reaching Wisconsin, of course, but considering how many homebuilts and antiques gather it seems remarkably safe.

Airshow acts that I especially enjoyed:

  • David Martin in a Beechcraft Baron (amazing to see what can be done without exceeding the limits of a normal-category airplane)
  • Jim Peitz in an F33C Bonanza (amazing to see what can be done in a four-seat family airplane that was beefed up at the factory for aerobatics)
  • Jeff Boerboon in a “Yak-110” (two Yak-55s glued together… with a turbojet engine stuck in the middle)
  • Aaron Fitzgerald in the Red Bull Bo 105 helicopter (loops and rolls that you can do only once in a Robinson or Bell!)
  • Patty Wagstaff in an Extra 330S
  • Mike Goulian from our KBED home in an Extra 330SC
  • Philipp Steinbach in the GB1 GameBird (see previous post)
  • pair of Grumman F7F Tigercats (beautiful on the ground as well)

Least favorite airshow act: a synchronized drone array. These stayed pretty far from the crowd so it was essentially a bunch of lights that could have been replicated with a big TV (it is possible to project 3D onto 2D!). Unless the drones are all around a crowd I don’t understand why a 3D array of drones is more compelling to watch than a big TV (or your phone held up close to your eyes).

[Separately, would it still be fun to watch one of these aerobatics acts if entirely flown by computer? I couldn’t find anyone who thought it would be difficult to have software replicate the maneuvers, including adjusting for wind, of the aerobatic champions.]

The craziest people I met? A couple from Texas who spent 15 years building a turbine-powered Rotorway helicopter. He is a helicopter CFI so he plainly knows about the existence of used Robinson R22s! He now has 43 hours on the machine (half as many as one of our flight school’s R44s might fly in a busy summer month) and is already thinking about selling it to begin another project. Runner-ups: Essentially anyone who builds a kit airplane. The world is drowning in certified airframes. Why not take one, convert it to Experimental, and then do whatever is desired?

[Actually, the founder of EAA, Paul Poberezny, was a good example of this kind of craziness. He flew all kinds of high-performance aircraft in the USAF, including the P-51 Mustang. Then he came home to Wisconsin to build low-performance slab-sided airplanes and fly them. Imagine if a Ferrari race car driver decided to build dune buggies for fun.]

I’ve resolved to go to Oshkosh more frequently. In a world where almost everyone thinks it is crazy/stupid to fly light aircraft (why not buy a JetBlue ticket for $69 instead?), it is nice to be in an asylum for 100,000+ folks who love to fly despite the irrationality of it all.

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9 thoughts on “Oshkosh Reflections and Tips for Next Time”

  1. How do you convert a certified aircraft to experimental and still have it be useful? Most experimental categories are not nearly as flexible as EAB.

  2. ChrisC is right.

    I’ve heard anecdotal success with Experimental-Exhibition by classifying all those $100 hamburger flights as “necessary for proficiency” but you still need a plane with bona fide exhibition value to begin with.

    “A Cessna 172 but I buy parts at AutoZone and do my own wrenching” is not something with a legitimate exhibition purpose and the FAA would never sign off on it.

    If you want the flexibility of Experimental – Amateur Built, you need to build the plane yourself. The FAA wants a very clear line between standard airworthiness and experimental. Allowing anyone to “convert” a type-certificated plane to experimental would destroy that line.

  3. Staying at the dorms works well and is low stress compared to hotel + car. Fly into MKE and get the Lamers UW Oshkosh bus ($26 each way) that takes you all the way to the dorms. Dorms are $75/night for two beds. There is a bus that goes from the dorms to Oshkosh ($20 for unlimited rides the whole week). By the dorm bus pickup there is a cafeteria that serves breakfast ($10) and dinner ($15). Uber rides are generally easy to get from dorms for venturing to other places in town.

    PhilG – Re the founders innovation prize aural AOA project – I’m glad that got 1st prize.
    You see the second place guy basically just had the idea for an app that uses “AI” to help pilots:
    “””
    Ken Hall received a second prize of $10,000 for a project that he calls The Virtual Co-Pilot. Using the processing power of a smartphone, a simple wireless air data sensor, substantial amounts of environmental data, and artificial intelligence, Ken’s solution delivers constant visual, verbal, and haptic energy state feedback to the pilot.
    “””
    However, it was clear from his description during the live presentation he had only figured out how to pair an off the shelf Bluetooth sensor to an iphone, and had not figured out how to actually do all the other stuff. I hope he does figure the AI magic out with the $10,000 he won. In my opinion, it should have been you up there with the more fully developed dome light copilot idea winning 2nd prize!

  4. People that build kit airplanes are crazy? Then there must be a lot of crazy people – Here in the US more kits are being registered each year than certified…

    I’m building a plane because I want something brand new, with the latest avionics (and a parachute), not a decrepit plane from the 70’s with aging, well, everything… I considered the typical 1974 C172M, but discarded the idea.

  5. Phil, excellent article. I haven’t yet been to Oshkosh but am day dreaming about going next year, so your post really hit the spot for me.

    Thanks to JDB for the details about the dorms.

    Craig, some people use the word “crazy” to mean “great” or even better. That’s what I assumed Phil meant when he used it to describe kit builders. I used to build RC helicopters from kits and enjoyed it enormously. The joy of building and flying a real airplane from a kit would be too great to describe in words, except perhaps for a poet or songwriter.

  6. Craig: The guy that I nominated for “craziest” had built a Rotorway helicopter. A Rotorway two-seat helicopter does not have better performance (nor a parachute) than a four-seat Robinson R44. It seems doubtful that it will have comparable reliability. The kit that we saw did not have avionics better than what Robinson is currently shipping (G500H). When you budget in 15 years of labor, the two-seat Rotorway is not cheaper than even a brand new R44 with every avionics option. So it is “crazy” in the sense of “cannot be justified rationally.” As Lon points out, however, there is no doubt a lot of pride associated with building your own flying machine!

  8. Ah, experimental helicopter…. Yeah, seems to lean crazy… If I’m going to have my airfoils spinning over my head, I want it certified…

    Hope to have my first flight at KLWM within 6 months-ish… And then a flight into OSH next year (maybe IFR, considering what you wrote above). The VFR way… That seems borderline crazy.

  9. Philip,

    Experimental R&D will have severe operating limitations. You’ll probably need to log every flight specifically how it works into your R&D plan, and submit to the FSDO on a regular basis, which they will look over for real. They’ll stop renewing the certificate if they even catch a whiff that you’re abusing it, and the burden of proof is entirely on you to overturn that determination.

    You’ll probably be barred from carrying passengers who are not directly necessary for the flight in question.

    You’ll probably be barred from flights beyond a relatively small distance from base, or need prior approval from the FSDO for each one.

    What you’re actually describing, and what I think you want, is a “Primary Non-Commercial” airworthiness category. Which, by the way, is what the aviation ARC recommended as part of the Part 23 rewrite, but that the FAA chose not to implement.

    https://www.eaa.org/en/eaa/aviation-advocacy-and-safety/aviation_advocacy/top-aviation-issues/certification-policy-changes

    You definitely won’t get what you want as Experimental R&D, and probably not with Experimental Exhibition.

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