OSH 09 was planned for a Friday departure from Auburn to get us on the ground at Oshkosh early Saturday morning to beat the inbound rush. At least that was the plan. Jason Hills, former Microsoft and KIS owner, and Kim Nicholas, Auburn RV-9A owner were to all gaggle out towards the east at 0600 Friday.  

We got up on Friday only to find that the preferred route over Montana was going to be iffy at best with t-storms over the western areas and afternoon convective activity over the eastern areas by afternoon. OK, that shoots that plan, so off to Plan B. We launched out of Richland about 8:00 AM and headed for Twin Falls, ID to swing around the convective areas to the north.  It was still early so the 2.2 hour flight to Twin Falls was nice and smooth and fairly scenic.  We gassed up at Twin Falls, checked the weather, and grabbed lunch, and by then it was about 12:40 local and we had already lost one hour due to time change.

Our next stop was somewhere in eastern South Dakota and it looked like Madison was a good choice. From the WAC charts, we pick small municipal fields with gas, that are close to town. This always seems to work out for some reason. We departed Scotts Bluff just in front of the oncoming rain and after an uneventful 1.5, made it to Madison. There was a good convective cell over Yankton, SD and we followed a couple Long EZ drivers trying to get into Gurney.  It was somewhat discerning as they broadcast on 122.75 what they were doing as they basically drove into cell trying to get to Gurney. All they needed to do was contact Flight Watch for the weather updates and they may have found good alternates (like Madison).  

On arrival Madison, SD, the field was pretty deserted except one guy out in a 152. When he can back, he gave us a ride into town to the local hotel where there was a Pizza place still open across from the hotel. On a Friday night, it looked like the sidewalks rolled up pretty early in the evening. The plan was to get an early start the next morning and have the planes ready when the re-fueling guy showed up at 7:30, so we could be wheels-up at 8:00 Central. We’d planned on stopping at Baraboo-Dells, WI for fuel, then run the approach into Oshkosh with full tanks. We scheduled a 6:45 taxi pick-up, but at 7:00 AM Friday, he was a no-show. I called the taxi dude and apparently woke him up, but he managed to show up in about 10 minutes. You really can’t be too ticked at the folks as the small towns always treat us well. 

We did manage to uncover the planes, get gas and pack up in time for an 8:00 AM departure. The weather to Baraboo-Dells was VFR with some lower scud hanging around. It took exactly 2.0 to run from SD over to Baraboo-Dells, which took us just south of the Volk Field restricted areas and a TFR over Sioux City (airshow).  We could have made Oshkosh non-stop, but going into the show with full tanks is a good thing. You don’t have to fuel up while you’re there, and if you need to hold or divert, there’s plenty of gas. Jason and I ran through the AirVenture NOTAM one last time. This was my second time in flying myself, but Jason’s first trip either attending or flying in. I fed the GPS for RIPON and it showed about 46 miles to go, so off we went. With a 3000’ SCT layer, we kept about 2500’ and slowed down to keep an eye out for traffic. Over RIPON, the procedure is to get in line, ½ mile separation, and make the run up the tracks to FISK at 1800’/ 90 kts. We turned inbound at RIPON and got established, but I got cut off by an RV-9A and couldn’t get the spacing. At that time I was about number 7 in line so I bailed out of the conga line, and headed back around to re-enter at Ripon, which was a good call. This gave Jason in the KIS good spacing on the RV, and by the time I came back around, there was no one ahead of me.  

Wind was 270 at about 20G25 so OSH tower had shut down runway 18/36 unless you really wanted it. I got a kick out of an LSA requesting 36 because it was a shorter taxi. Once FISK approach explained (again) the wind thing, he reconsidered. I proceeded along the tracks, got the “Silver RV rock your wings”, followed by “proceed to Downwind for 27 and contact tower on one-one-eight point five”.  Cool, almost there. I joined downwind to see Jason landing already. There was an Aztec on a long final for 27 so I extended, then was cleared base over the water with directions to land at or beyond the Green Dot (the middle dot). From what I can tell, I put it on the dot, with the obligatory “silver and yellow RV turn left into the grass when able and welcome to Oshkosh”. Hold up the HPB (Home Built Parking) sign to show the paddle and scooter guys, and  5 minutes later I was parked in row 329. It’s still amazing that this number of aircraft (around 12,000) can be brought together in one place for the week with very few safety problems. There’s always the pilots that refuse to read the NOTAM and get in trouble, but thankfully, those are few in number.

The Big Show 

The show itself was in line with previous expeditions to Wisconsin. This was my 18^th time so I’m there to catch up with friends and check out the new stuff usually. This year, I got there early to give myself time to watch the landing follies Sunday (which is the busy time for arrivals) from the grass abeam the green dot on R/W 27, which is way too much fun. Basically, you just hang out with a radio and watch the fun. It’s amazing how many pilots can’t understand “turn left into the grass immediately for landing traffic behind you”, or “not the orange dot, the green dot”.  

Attendance this year seemed high considering the state of the economy. As of Monday AM, someone counted 381 RV’s (Van’s RVs, not campers), a very full camp Scholer, saturated transient parking, and a perceived higher attendance early in the week. The weather was generally not too bad, but we had 20-25 kt wind the first couple days with rain most evenings. The Virgin Galactic White Knight 2 was interesting and we got a good look at that. I usually camp with a group from Michigan and a guy named Terry Lutz usually camps with us. He’s a former USAF Test Pilot and retired Northwest Airlines guy, but also happened to be a test pilot with Airbus, so guess what; he was the co-pilot on the A380 that arrived on Tuesday so we got a personalized walk-around early on Wednesday AM. It’s one big jet, that’s for sure. This particular 380 is the test article so there’s no passenger interior and it’s taped up with instrumentation on the exterior. It was interesting that the crew can vary the 70,000 pound engines up to 77,000 with inputs to the fuel control panel and FADAC.  

The Warbird lot seemed a little emptier this year but there was still a good variety of aircraft to enjoy, but the homebuilts, vintage, and classics appeared in high numbers though. The convention site had undergone a lot of upgrades this year so we spent a bit of time figuring out where things were this year. Overall, it seemed like the site improvements were well received. Food was about the same as years past but not nearly as bad as Arlington with lower prices and better quality. You still needed to lunch early or you were destined to stand in line for a while. 

As usual, I ran into a bunch of friends from around the country, and even got to meet Radomir from the Pilots DL (also an RV-7A owner) finally.  One of my friends from Half Moon Bay, CA, had built a stunning Spencer Aircar, and was awarded the Gold Lindy (Grand Champion) Seaplane award. I’d done a little work on the plane at one time so it was nice to see him take that well deserved trophy! I also ran into Hal Bryan (former FSX Community Manager), who’s now the Oskhosh365 Community Manager at EAA and is in the process of relocating to the Oshkosh area. I suspect he’s found his perfect gig!

The Return 

Kim had finally made it out of Seattle on Saturday and landed Sunday at OSH to camp in Home Built Camping (HBC on the sign). We kept and eye on weather for the departure and had originally planned on leaving Thursday AM. With a front scheduled to sit on Oshkosh Thursday, we took the opportunity to depart after the show on Wednesday and get as far as we could to the north west. The weather looked like it was going to be over central MN and WI in the AM, so the plan was to get north of it as it passed overnight.  

Departing is easier then getting in. You basically pull your plane out, up to the taxiway. When cleared, just follow the scooter guys and wave the VFR sign. They direct you to the appropriate line for departure. As usual, this is all done without talking to anyone, you just listen and do! I didn’t want a 36 departure, as this makes you head east or south to clear the Class D, so I talked the scooter guy into passing me over to 27, which is a direct straight out and on course. Once the afternoon airshow finished, I bet it was no more than 10 minutes from engine start to departure. I had time to do a rolling mag and prop check, and while waiting on a departure in front of me, had a minute to feed the GPS. Departures on 27 are basically two at a time, one left, one right, and staggered a little. Once airborne, maintain 1300’ or below to clear the inbound traffic at 1800’ until clear of Class D then you’re on your way.  

Since we departed after the show, we weren’t going to get far, so we headed for New Richmond, northeast of Minneapolis in western WI. The weather was generally decent, but a heavy overcast at about 8000’ was really ominous and precipitated a call to Flight Watch to make sure there was nothing nasty under that deck. After about 1.8 flight time, I arrived at New Richmond and got the RV gassed, tied down, and covered. Jason and Kim arrived about 30 minutes later as they had to endure the line and fly the 36 departure procedure. We were able to get a couple rooms at the Riverside Inn and had a decent pizza at a place within walking distance. The hotel was nice and it was good to get a decent night’s sleep.

Thursday AM, we headed out to the airport around 7:30 and noticed that the overcast extended from the east right up to our location. There was rain overnight and it looked like our plan worked. Oshkosh ended up with an all-day rain on Thursday so that would have made a departure interesting. We checked the west-bound weather and everything looked good, but shortly after departure, we started hearing about lower ceilings that materialized to the west after someone shot the ILS to get into Watertown. With this development, we set down at Milbank, SD, to check weather and see that this was doing. XM hadn’t caught up so we needed a good view of what was going on. It looked like the low crud was pushing down from the north, further than was forecast, so we headed due south from Milbank (eastern SD) until we could turn west towards our Spearfish destination. Clouds started at about 4500 BKN, so we headed west on top, where the clouds remained broken. That was the good news. The bad was that we eventually ended up at 10,500 over the top. A stratus deck appeared and we weren’t sure how far that was going to stretch as Flight Watch was calling for decent weather around Pierre, SD. Since we were only about 100 miles from our destination, we decided to work our way down through the broken clouds and did the rest of the leg to Spearfish at 4500 in the bumps.

We made Spearfish in 2.7 hours and arranged for some ground wheels with the FBO. The normal courtesy car was out, so the lady at the desk loaned us her personal car to go get some food. Really nice! Spearfish is a short ride from Sturgis so the biker traffic was already picking up. It took a while to eat and get going again, but we eventually made it back off the ground and headed for Helena. 2.7 hours later we were landing at Helena. Kim needed the gas stop in his RV-9A and I wanted to check weather before heading out over the rest of the Montana rocks, but Jason pressed on to Missoula.  We’d planned to spend the night at Missoula, but based on the forecast for Friday (showers over western MT), and the great weather we had, we decided to head for Coeur d’Alene. I left Jason a vm on the cell and Kim and I launched for Idaho. The weather was great, light headwinds, and little bumps and another short .7 hours, we were on the ground at Pappy Boyington Field and called it a day. Overall, we logged 8.4 hours on Thursday! We found the local Days Inn which had an Outback right next door so it was really nice to have a good meal and a beer.

Friday AM, Seattle was still calling for some morning crud, so we launched out for Ephrata. By the time we got to Ephrata, Arlington and Paine were calling clear, so Jason and the KIS kept going. Kim and I set down at Ephrata to double check weather on the web and found that the gunk was clearing. We topped off fuel and headed out for the short one hour flight home.