I finally decided to make my first visit to Oshkosh. This involved being the transport pilot for Gerhard Deffner, so that he could meet with Stemme as part of their US marketing effort. As a result, some of my expenses were covered for the trip, which is good since I am currently limiting expenditure to pay off short-term debt.
Originally we planned to fly up on Saturday and fly back on Tuesday. However, when I found out that Burt Rutan was giving a talk on Tuesday night, we changed the plan to fly up on Sunday and return on Wednesday.

Sunday
Gerhard and I flew direct from McKinney to Quincy, Illinois. Quincy was not the originally-planned fuel stop, but due to map translation issues (i.e. Gerhard in the back seat couldn't seem to find out where we were on the sectionals, while I knew exactly where we were from the GPS), we ended up picking Quincy because it was pretty much along the route of flight. When we landed at Quincy, it was 102 degrees on the ground, hotter than in Texas.
There are two reasons why one should not land at Quincy:
- Fuel is expensive ($3.70 a gallon for 100LL)
- The cafeteria food in the terminal building is mediocre
The airport is an example of the tendency of small regional cities to pretend that they are international gateways by getting feeder airlines to fly to their airport, setting up an airport screening zone run by the Department of Homeland Security (complete with an expensive-looking new DHS floormat next to the metal detector, and a couple of sour-looking DHS employees who grunt at you as you pass by). Often they name the airport something like "XXXXXX International Airport". In the case of Quincy, they are trying to attract new businesses to the airport. There is a jet warbird centre at one end of the airfield, next to the Illinois National Guard area (while we were taxiing for take-off a C-130 flew in and landed).
Takeoff at Quincy was made more difficult by the fact that the airport had closed the main taxiway to the departure end of the active runway, but hadn't roped it off. When I taxied down towards the end of the runway, we suddenly found ourselves looking at a missing section of taxiway. The alternative of taxiing across the grass did not look appealing, so we had to back-track and then back-taxi on the active runway. This did nothing for the CHTs or my temper, since we then had to climb at reduced power to avoid overheating. It wasn't until we got to around 5000 feet that the cockpit became comfortable again.
After flying most of the way from Quincy to Oshkosh at 7500 feet (where it was very pleasant after being fried on the ground at Quincy) we ducked down below the clouds about 30 miles South of Oshkosh and headed for the airport. We followed the standard Oshkosh arrival procedure from the South West, flying up the railroad tracks. For a newbie like me, this was an interesting experience, since you are not supposed to talk to the controllers - you waggle your wings to acknowledge receipt of instructions. My experience was about to get a lot more interesting. They told me to head for 36L. I should have rejected that instruction and asked for 27, since there was a wind from 270 at 12-16 knots. I therefore disobeyed Oshkosh Rule #1:

Never accept a dumb instruction, even if it does come from a resonant, well-modulated voice.

I duly flew an approach to 36L, only to find that there was a 12 knot crosswind directly across the runway, gusting to 18 knots. I flew down final, and was told to land on the blue dot (i.e. mid-field). Despite holding full opposite rudder, I was unable to keep the plane straight on final, and it became clear that the wind was still too strong close to the ground for me to successfully land straight. I was not prepared to prang the plane in front of a large audience (and I could already see a lot of people watching from the grass and parking areas), so I told the tower "unable to land". They then directed me towards 27. I was getting ready to fly a loop approach over the lake, but then was instructed to immediately turn and land on the numbers for 27. This caused an anxious 20 seconds or so, since I was climbing when I received the command, so I had to shut off all power, make a very sharp turn with full aileron (which resulted in an ugly sideslip) and then basically dive for the numbers, since the tower kept reminding me not to get tangled up with a rather slow high-wing plane which was going to land at mid-field. After much sweating and cursing, I managed to put the plane down almost on the numbers, and get it stopped by the first intersection. I refused to play the "turn onto the grass" game due to my less-than-robust nose gear, but that soon became irrelevant as I learnt Oshkosh Rule #2:

Never take a right exit on 27 if you are parking on the South West side of the field.

I proceeded to be directed on a very long detour around the North-East side of the field, then back across 36R and 36L to the Experimental plane parking area. A significant proportion of this route is across grass. The main issue with taxiing a Long-EZ on grass is that the nosewheel tends to "dig in" on the surface. This forces you to use a lot of throttle to keep the plane moving - between 1400 and 1700 rpm dependent on the state of the grass. As a result, your CHTs rise quickly. By the time I reached the assigned parking area, I had to shut the engine down since all 4 CHTs had reached 400 degrees. I finally hand-pushed the plane into a parking space, and we got it tied down.
I registered myself and my plane at one of the EAA registration booths (which took a while, since the computer card reader repeatedly refused to read my EAA membership card).
We then went off to rendezvous with Gerhard's Stemme buddies at the Stemme display zone. After that, it was off to our campsite. For 2005, we had a campsite in the Oshkosh YMCA. This sounded peculiar when originally described to me. However...
...The Oshosh YMCA is something else. I have never seen a YMCA like this before. The location has a lane swimming pool, a diving pool, a gym the size of a football field, 2 dance studios, an ice rink, a restaurant/breakfast area, and a basketball court that they convert into a camp site, complete with an astroturf floor and assigned camping spaces marked out with tape (small sizes for single tents, large sizes for family pitches). The basketball court is air-conditioned, which on Sunday felt like heaven, since the tamperature in the day had risen to 98 degrees.
So...it was restaurant time and then off to bed.

Monday
After an early rise and breakfast at the YMCA restaurant (all you can eat for $5.00) we set off for Oshkosh. After arriving, I soon made the first discovery - a cafe next to the canard pusher parking area that sells freshly baked warm donuts. Heaven! I relived my childhood, munching on a donut while wandering the flight line.
I spent the early part of the day wandering the canard flight line, meeting up with people that I already knew from various fly-ins and other events. Elwood Johnson (my bank manager from the Hondo fly-in) was present, as was Tim LoDolce from Truckee. James Redmon had arrived in his Berkut after taking part in the AirVenture air race, which he reported as somewhat exciting due to low-level turbulence. Sandy (his wife) was not impressed at having her head snapped against the top of the canopy on several occasions...
I then wandered around some of the parking zones. The sheer number of aircraft at Oshkosh is somewhat mind-boggling. I walked down one of the streets and passed a field that appeared to contain at least 200 RVs. Next door was an area next to the runway that appeared to be occupied by at least 100 Bonanzas. The canard area was still relatively empty, because a lot of planes had flown off to join Glass Overcast.
Glass Overcast was originally intended to be a formation fly-past and landing with White Knight and Spaceship One in the middle. However, due to a series of changes (including the decision to defer the arrival of White Knight/Spaceship One until the middle of the afternoon) the Glass Overcast formation flight was modified to the point where the planes would leave Fond Du Lac in nose-to-tail formation and land at Oshkosh without a fly-past. (Because Fond Du Lac is only about 15 miles from Oshkosh, assembling a formation in the air after take-off before arriving over Oshkosh would have been impossible). This led to a number of pilots not even bothering to take part.
The Monday afternoon was dominated by the arrival of White Knight and Spaceship One. The main disappointment was that they stopped White Knight so far out on the flight line that Burt, Mike Melvill etc. appeared as small dots, requiring opera glasses for proper visibility. After squinting in vain at Burt and the other dignitaries in the distance, I wandered off to some of the vendor tents.
One interesting feature of Oshkosh is that a number of businesses only tenuously related (or not related at all) to aviation take fairly impressive-looking exhibition spaces. Many of these are automobile and finance corporations, clearly working on the assumption that where there are planes you will find people with lots of disposable income (possibly true in the case of an owner of, say, a Cessna 410, but less true in the case of a guy building an RV in his garage). A number of those corporations also decorate their exhibition spaces with attractive girls whose legs start just below the ears. The best-looking girls were to be seen at the Virgin Galactic stand on Aeroshell Square (yes, you can buy the naming rights to just about anything at Oshkosh, it would appear).
After more wandering about, and watching the rest of the airshow, I happened to walk into Aeroshell Square at the precise moment that Burt, Mike Melvill and Pete Siebold were taking part in a second welcome ceremony. This time, they were standing next to White Knight/Spaceship One, which had been moved from the flight line to become the central exhibit on the square for the week. Burt, Mike and Pete gave short speeches, and then Burt answered some questions from the audience. This time, you actually felt connected to these guys, instead of seeing specks in the distance.
Paul Allen was also on the podium, and also made some remarks. After studying Paul Allen for a minute, I had no hestitation in naming him The World's Worst-Dressed Billionaire. For a guy reportedly worth around $15bn, his clothing was remarkably awful - a cheap-looking shirt, a pair of ill-fitting short pants, black socks (argh!) and black slip-ons. Allied to a less than impressive physique, you can be sure that he would never be mistaken for anybody with serious money.
Burt, Mike, Pete and Paul Allen quite cheerfully signed anything put in front of them for a while at the conclusion of the question-and-answer session, then disappeared in a car off to some other event.
We left Oshkosh at around 6.30pm, with storm clouds moving in from the West (the weather radar showed a large system over Minneapolis).

Tuesday
The YMCA camping option at Oshkosh is a good option if it rains, which it did on Monday night. We all felt ever-so-slightly smug as the rain tipped down on Monday evening. I saw a number of damp-looking individuals at OSH on the Tuesday.
Bill Allen (owner of Long-EZ G-WILY) finally appeared by his plane (which was parked 2 rows down from me, complete with a Union Jack on a flagpole in front of the nose), so I was able to introduce myself. He flew from Gloucester, UK to Wick in Scotland, Rejiavik in Iceland, Greenland, St. Johns Newfoundland, Bangor Maine and Oshkosh.
I met with Terry Schubert to get ideas on how to further improve cooling on my plane. I removed the lower cowling, and we discussed various ideas and options (see my Cooling Saga postings for more details).

The great thing about Oshkosh is that the afternoon airshows are always spectacular. There were warbird fly-pasts, including a novel formation of a Mustang, a P-38 (flown by Steve Hinton), an F-4 Phantom and an F-16. Terry Schubert remarked as the F-4 made a solo pass "that plane is living proof that a barn door will fly if you put enough horsepower behind it". At the time I was imagining the cost of a low pass with full afterburner in an F-4. Probably more than my entire year's fuel bill for 131JF...
I failed in my objective of getting to see Burt talk however. When we went over to the Theatre in the Woods to try and see Burt, it was only just past 5.00 pm but already there were dozens of people waiting in line. It was clear that (a) we would have to wait for a long time (b) we would not get a decent seat. So, we gave up on that idea. Since I had already seen Burt speak at his 60th Birthday Party in Mojave in the Summer of 2003, I only felt slightly cheated...

Wednesday
Gerhard and I broke camp at the YMCA and brought our flight gear into the airport.
I managed to get doughnuts again!
I then spent some time at the small vendors area, buying fasteners etc. that you can get from Spruce or Wicks, but which I could buy in quantity and slip into my bag. I ran into Gary Hertzler, and he agreed to come look inside my cowling, however, we ended up missing each other. Gerhard, Joe and I spent some time looking at the Paris Jet, which is a French jet trainer, converted into a 4-seat business jet. It looks like...well...a French jet trainer from the 1950's. Price is not bad for a jet, starting at around $420k depending on how many gizmos you want to load into the cockpit. However, with 2 Turbomeca pure jets in the fuselage, the fuel burn may make those of us with limited wallets wince somewhat...
We finally pulled the plane out to the flight line at 12.15. After engine start, it was a short taxi to 36L, followed by a parallel takeoff next to a Decathlon, who we left behind on climb-out. Flying back over Fond-Du-Lac, we monitored the AIIS for Oshkosh, to hear them informing arriving pilots that the field was full - unless you were a warbird or a display aircraft, you would have to land somewhere else.

Flight Back
We flew from Oshkosh direct to Trenton Missouri, and from there on to McKinney. After rolling out and waiting to back-taxi, 2 deer came out of the woods, and wandered across the runway into the woods on the other side.
Trenton Missouri is a nice little airport with cheap fuel ($2.50 when we landed) and a courtesy car that you can use to go into town. This is true rural America - the side roads on the way to town were full of vendors selling melons, corn etc. from the back of trucks. We went into town with 2 other pilots and had a Mexican lunch. Most agreeable.
Gerhard flew the plane from Trenton to McKinney. He hadn't flown the Long-EZ for a while, but that only showed once - when he let the nosewheel drop into the tarmac immediately after touchdown at McKinney. Otherwise, I sat in the back seat and we discussed the best way to sell a $250k motor glider in the USA (the Stemme).
After swapping seats with Gerhard at McKinney, I touched down at Dallas Executive just before 20.00 CST. A successful and relatively cheap introduction to Oshkosh. I now understand why you need to spend a week there - you will not have enough to see everything if you spend only 3 days there like we did.