Oshkosh B-gosh!
This place is crazy – crazy about airplanes. Big, small, short, fat, tall, lean, mean, chubby; romantic, exciting, macho, beautiful; full of new tech, celebrating old tech. They’re not just here, they’re here by the thousands. In 2021 they figure over 10,000 aircraft showed up for this event, including more than 3,000 show planes, 1,400 vintage aircraft and 354 warbirds. It’s an incredible sight.
This year I’m here with my company for the first time to schmooze with other providers and showcase our products to operators and individual owners. I immediately found this unique place to have a special kind of atmosphere. It manages to pull off being something for nearly everyone – part trade show, part air show and part state fair. There are airplane and helicopter rides, tours of static aircraft, over a thousand forums and workshops, trams that circulate people around the huge airport grounds, and over 860 exhibitors. There was a Boeing 777 and an Airbus A330. There was a Ford Tri-motor, a B-17, several B-25s and a B-29. There were dozens of WWII P-51 Mustangs and Navy fighters, acrobatic planes, ultralights, helicopters, daily air shows, and planes flying in formations as large as 50 aircraft. Simply put, it’s amazing.
World War II fighter planes – a P40 on the left and two P51s center and right – with their engine cowling art and creative names
I have never been to Oshkosh. I’ve only been to Wisconsin once; that was for one of my son’s college football games. This place at this time is an experience. It lasts for a full week – a full week! I can’t imagine staying here for the whole thing, but I know many people do. They estimate 200-300,000 people attend every year and usually stay for more than one day. They have thousands of grassy campsites on the airport that allow pilots to fly in and camp next to their airplane. And thousands of people do that!
This time of year (the last full week in July) can be brutally hot and humid, but this year we’ve gotten lucky – temperatures in the low 80s and humidity between 70% and 85%. I’ll take it.
A B-25 Bomber, and left, the nose of a B-29 across from the Boeing 777 EcoDemonstrator
I’m here with Raisbeck Engineering, a preeminent provider of performance and utility upgrades for general aviation aircraft. This is the company’s second year here. We’re still feeling our way around and figuring out the best place to anchor our site, what to display and how to configure it. There are changes set to take effect for next year. The goal is to maximize foot traffic and curb appeal with lead-in airplanes on our booth grounds beside the main road through the exhibit, or should I say, fairgrounds. Oshkosh is a town of 66,000 with a greater area population of about 160,000. Not overly large to be accommodating a tripling in population for over a week. They do a fantastic job of managing traffic, parking, people – and planes. Oshkosh sits next to beautiful Lake Winnebago, and our housing happens to be a lovely brick four bedroom home on one of the lake’s canals. A lush and beautiful setting that makes it hard to believe this place is overcome with snow and ice every winter.
Formation flying goes on for a good part of the afternoons.
To give you an idea of the scale of this event, you can walk a mile in either direction and only then begin to cover the full breadth of all the planes that are here. A mile to the left and you run into more vintage military airplanes than you knew existed. A mile up the taxiway to the right and you will find the nearly fifteen hundred vintage airplanes and further out still are the ultralights, with their own runway. It’s craftily set at an angle to the paved runways so that the ultras can come and go without disturbing regular air traffic. And there’s an incredible amount of regular air traffic. They have colored dots on the runway as touch down targets, so they can land three planes at a time – each one a bit further up the runway than the last. During this week, this airport has more takeoffs and landings than any other in the world. As a pilot, you have to know what you’re doing to be here.
The Waters Club on Lake Winnebago. It was the site of an EAA sponsored dinner. A beautiful setting complete with Laser and Taser evening sailboat races.
All in all, this is a great experience for enthusiasts of speed, daring and being airborne. There’s history, education, skills sessions, high tech, memorabilia, art, souvenirs, food, drink – you name it, it’s here. The latter half of the week is less hectic than the first, probably because it tends to be more family oriented. There are daily air shows with great stunt flying, and every night brings some sort of extracurricular event. You can run yourself ragged here if you’re not careful.
If you happen to be interested in planes, this is a great place to visit. They love their airplanes.
