Whether it be the smell of 'Jet A' hanging in the air, the rumbling sound of big radial engines thundering overhead, or simply the sweet chirp that signals an aircraft has just returned to earth, to me, these are the sounds of summer and that means it's airshow season. It's the time when pilots yearn to point their aircraft toward Wisconsin and make their annual pilgrimage to Oshkosh.
Airventure, as I'm sure you are well aware, is an airshow and convention that has been conducted in the same place for so long that its very location has become its brand name: Oshkosh, or just Osh if you're a pilot and want to sound super cool. This year celebrates the 50th occurrence of the world's biggest airshow and I was once again eager to join ranks with the other 10,000 aircraft at the show. The Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA), who organize the extravaganza, report that 642,000 people attended this year's week long festival of all things aviation. That's a lot of people. I'm pretty sure that won't remember everyone's name.
Airventure, as I'm sure you are well aware, is an airshow and convention that has been conducted in the same place for so long that its very location has become its brand name: Oshkosh, or just Osh if you're a pilot and want to sound super cool. This year celebrates the 50th occurrence of the world's biggest airshow and I was once again eager to join ranks with the other 10,000 aircraft at the show. The Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA), who organize the extravaganza, report that 642,000 people attended this year's week long festival of all things aviation. That's a lot of people. I'm pretty sure that won't remember everyone's name.
It turns out that the start of our trip from Grass Valley to Oshkosh was delayed by a day due to the unfortunate scheduling of Airventure relative to our local Grass Valley Airshow. Although it was an annoying gaffe on the part of the EAA, I certainly hope no one at headquarters gets sacked over it. I would have preferred to make the 1700 mile trek to Wisconsin in a more leisurely two days, but I was previously committed to help out with the Grass Valley Airshow which was held on Saturday, the 20th of July. This left us just one day to make the trip if we were to arrive at Oshkosh on the morning of the first day of the show. Our plan then, was to leave early on Sunday and fly to the vicinity of eastern Minnesota, so that on the next day we could arrive at the show early and with plenty of fuel.
The plane was fueled and loaded Saturday evening after the Grass Valley airshow had wrapped up and we made a nearly on time departure the next morning. In the coolness of the 7 a.m. air, the Sierras quickly fell beneath us and soon we were passing a bit north of Lake Tahoe and Reno Nevada.
Our route out to Oshkosh lacked sightseeing objectives, but it did offer the fastest transit time. We were flying with the crow on this trip, a straight line. But is it actually straight? Because we live on a spherical surface, straight lines become arcs when projected on a map, which are easily detectable when traveling a significant distance. In the flight plan above, note that our curving trajectory toward Oshkosh is in reality a straight line (more or less). We were fortunate to find that there were airports that just happened to lie along our path so that we didn't need to deviate too far for fuel -- or the restroom.
Our route out to Oshkosh lacked sightseeing objectives, but it did offer the fastest transit time. We were flying with the crow on this trip, a straight line. But is it actually straight? Because we live on a spherical surface, straight lines become arcs when projected on a map, which are easily detectable when traveling a significant distance. In the flight plan above, note that our curving trajectory toward Oshkosh is in reality a straight line (more or less). We were fortunate to find that there were airports that just happened to lie along our path so that we didn't need to deviate too far for fuel -- or the restroom.
Continuing on, we pass the restricted airspace of Fallon Naval Air Station, then I made our first unplanned stop at Wells, NV which was still some 200nm short of Kemmerer WY. Nature calls. It seemed to be a dry, dusty kind of place and it was completely deserted. In the distance, there were some Ag planes on the ramp and I wondered where they would be spraying. If there was any water around, I didn't notice it.
On to Kemmerer WY, but first, we would cross the Great Salt Lake and then pass to the north of Salt Lake City which was just visible on the horizon over our right wing. At this point, looking straight down, I could see the ground level was slowly rising to meet us. We were cruising at 9,500' toward the Continental Divide, but we would reach Kemmerer before we got that far. Kemmerer's elevation is about 7300'. We did not have to descend much to arrive at this high altitude airport. After refueling, we were heavy, and the outside temperature was already in the mid 80's. The density altitude had rocketed north of 10,500' by the time of our departure, which meant that we might be using a lot of runway getting off of the ground. Our takeoff roll was excruciatingly slow by RV standards, taking nearly half of the 8000' runway.
We were passing through a gap in the Rocky mountains where their peaks were lower and a lot less, well, rocky. They appeared more hilly than mountainy and were generally grass covered. This is a good path for anyone who doesn't like flying over actual mountains.
And on we went crossing the great prairie diagonally, ever northward. We had descended from 9,500' after passing to the south of Casper WY. We followed the lowering landscape at about 3,500' AGL for fear of getting trapped on top of a gathering layer of puffy cumulus clouds. When we arrived at Winner SD (KCIR), we were hungry. Although it was only about 2:30 p.m. for us, when I realized that we were now in the central time zone my stomach was instantly two hours hungrier.
We were passing through a gap in the Rocky mountains where their peaks were lower and a lot less, well, rocky. They appeared more hilly than mountainy and were generally grass covered. This is a good path for anyone who doesn't like flying over actual mountains.
And on we went crossing the great prairie diagonally, ever northward. We had descended from 9,500' after passing to the south of Casper WY. We followed the lowering landscape at about 3,500' AGL for fear of getting trapped on top of a gathering layer of puffy cumulus clouds. When we arrived at Winner SD (KCIR), we were hungry. Although it was only about 2:30 p.m. for us, when I realized that we were now in the central time zone my stomach was instantly two hours hungrier.
We ate our packed lunch picnic style in the South Dakota wind. After racing across the ramp a couple of times to retrieve wind driven napkins and baggies I was happy to be done with our not so relaxing lunch. Refueled, we were soon back in the air and heading for Minnesota.
Our flight path would take us over Rochester MN, which was about as far as I wanted to go on the first day. My thinking was that we would launch first thing in the morning with full tanks from eastern Minnesota for the 1 hour flight to Oshkosh. This would allow us plenty of fuel if there was a hold in effect. We diverted at the last minute to Austin MN instead of Rochester because the airport was smaller and it seemed that there would still be a good selection of hotels available.
As it turned out, there was a hotel right across the street from the airport. It looked a little sketchy, I'll admit, but how fortunate for us that it was so close? We quickly checked in and we went straight to our room as we were eager to find some dinner. To our horror, we found that our room was already occupied. Well, this is a little embarrassing, I thought. Back to the registration counter, I went. So sorry, blah, blah, blah, try this room, the registrar offers. OK, with patience running thin, we finally get a room that we don't have to share with strangers. The bed was a broken down heap, deeply sagging in the middle. The rest of the room did not inspire much in the way of hygienic confidence. Carol and I agree that we really don't want to stay here, but we feel stuck since we don't have a car.
After dropping off our luggage, we head back across the street to the empty airport terminal building to look around a bit for a courtesy car. Sometimes they leave the keys for late arriving pilots. No luck. Then I had the idea to call the airport manager. Unfortunately for him, he had made the rookie mistake of publishing his phone number on Airnav.com. Then a miracle happened that literally saved the day, he answered his phone and offered to drive out to the airport to provide us a courtesy car. Amazing. The airport manager instructed us on where to find a nicer hotel and we were soon on our way with a car for the night, but we still had a hotel room that we didn't want.
By 9:00 p.m. we were settled in a nicer hotel, had our dinner in front of us, and we received most of our money back from the not-so-nice hotel. It was a good first day out, but after more than 8 hours in the air we were tired. The only thing left to worry about is whether or not Oshkosh would be accepting arrivals due to the soggy ground conditions after having suffered 3 straight days of rain. The weather forecast for the remainder of the week at KOSH was good, so I felt like we would get in sooner or later.
The next morning we were re-fueled and we again expressed our thanks to the awesome airport manager for the courtesy car. He really went above and beyond. And one final note about Austin: We found out that in addition to having a great airport, Austin is also the world headquarters of the Hormel foods corporation. In our haste to get on toward Oshkosh, we passed up our chance to visit the "Guggenham" -- otherwise known as the SPAM museum.
It was a fairly short hop to Oshkosh and my concerns about getting in faded once we were close enough to receive the arrival ATIS. They announced that they were receiving aircraft in the home built parking area and that is where we wanted to go.
The first step in arriving at Oshkosh is to fly to the little town of Ripon. As we approached Ripon there was a hold in effect, so we needed to circle around the adjacent Green Lake. The airspace around the lake was fully saturated with aircraft. On my ADS-B traffic display, the aircraft targets were packed so tightly that it looked like a solid line around the lake. I plunged on ahead fitting into the largest gap I could see, but it was probably less than the 1/2 mile separation that the arrival NOTAM specifies.
Fortune smiled on us once again as the hold was lifted after we had made only 1/2 lap around the lake! We turned for Oshkosh and left Ripon and Green Lake behind. We were supposed to be flying 90kts, but the aircraft in front of us were only flying 75kts so we had to slow down to Cessna speed. That meant that we had to deploy our flaps and fly very slowly. At that speed, in level flight, the aircraft is nose high and the forward visibility suffers. Not a problem though, since we have GPS and I can still see well enough to the left and to the right. There is no need to see where we are going to know where we are; one simply needs to subtract out everywhere that we aren't :)
We continued our approach and observed many aircraft whose pilots seemed to have little regard for the NOTAM. While we were flying single file over the railroad tracks as specified, a Bonanza passed us on the right and cut in line several aircraft ahead. Ever slower, we flew downwind to runway 27 at 70kts behind an RV who was himself behind a high winged aircraft, probably a Cessna 172. I considered bailing out of the pattern when I was required to make a sharp 180 degree turn to final at around 65kts. This was the most dangerous 5 seconds of our entire trip. I dipped the nose down briefly while making the turn to unload the wings and prevent a stall. I remember thinking that this was all so very unnecessary and unsafe. If people would fly the NOTAM (90kts) no one would find themselves in a position where a stall spin accident was a real possibility. We ended up making our arrival a little harder than I would prefer, but we were on the orange dot and in one piece. Hurray!
Some of the campers were still suffering the effects of the prior rain.
This is a single seat privet jet. It belongs to Paul Dye, editor of Kitplanes magazine and former space shuttle flight controller.
There is an airshow every day starting at about 2:00 pm.
"Doc" is one of only two B-29s still flying.
Keep in mind that going to Airventure means more than just seeing an airshow, there is also eating and Walmart. It is a curious thing that we somehow find it necessary to visit Walmart no matter where we go. I won't bore with all the details, but this time hair product, nail clippers, and Dr. Scholl were involved.
We found time to visit Ardy and Ed's drive in. This might be the last place where one can find car hops wearing roller-skates. It's located just east of the airshow at the shore of Lake Winnebago. I don't know if they just do this during the airshow, but it was truly a "blast from the past." Or at the very least, it was a blast from my father's past. Either way, I enjoyed the experience.
After three days of airshow, we were about done with the whole airplane thing and we were happy to depart midday Thursday. Our next destination would be Hutchinson KS, where we would find the Cosmosphere Museum. But first, our route would take us near the "Field of Dreams" from the movie of the same name. I found its exact location in Iowa from Google Earth and then copied the coordinates to a user waypoint in my Garmin navigator. The airplane knew where it was going, but I didn't spot the field until we were just about on top of it.
"If you build it, he will come." I guess it's true. Some of us by airplane.
Following the super exciting FOD flyby, we bounced along inscribing a canted path across America's heartland, and unfortunately, we were facing 10 to 15kt headwinds. With a little experimentation, we found them to be least determined down low. Mile after mile of green farmland passed slowly under our wings as we left Iowa, passed briefly through Missouri, and then across the unnecessarily large Kansas.
Now the constant headwinds were causing us to dip into our fuel reserve, so we made an unplanned fuel stop at Herrington KS. It was windswept, hot, and completely deserted on this Thursday afternoon. I wasn't sure by the look of the place if there would be fuel available. There was, and we were soon back in the air for the 62 mile epilogue to our day's flying.
Now the constant headwinds were causing us to dip into our fuel reserve, so we made an unplanned fuel stop at Herrington KS. It was windswept, hot, and completely deserted on this Thursday afternoon. I wasn't sure by the look of the place if there would be fuel available. There was, and we were soon back in the air for the 62 mile epilogue to our day's flying.
Hutchinson airport has a rather complicated arrangement of intersecting runways. My Garmin moving map displays extended runway centerlines which make lining up for a particular runway a lot easier when you can't visually identify your runway. The tower controller cleared me for runway 17 and with a little help from Garmin, I somehow managed to land on that very same runway.
By chance, I happened to meet the airport manager in the terminal who was helpful with directions, but unfortunately, there was no courtesy car so we would have to Uber it to our hotel. We ate a nice leisurely steak dinner at the airport restaurant where we also enjoyed some wine and beer after a long afternoon of flying.
By chance, I happened to meet the airport manager in the terminal who was helpful with directions, but unfortunately, there was no courtesy car so we would have to Uber it to our hotel. We ate a nice leisurely steak dinner at the airport restaurant where we also enjoyed some wine and beer after a long afternoon of flying.
The next day we were off to the Cosmosphere. It's a well stocked space museum that you've probably never heard of. At least I hadn't until very recently. Inside there were exhibits on everything from Dr. Robert Goddard, early liquid fuel rocket pioneer, to Apollo artifacts.
The mangled machinery below is a part off the top of one of the F1 engines that powered Apollo 11's first stage on its way to Earth orbit. The first stage is discarded when it runs out of fuel some 38 miles in altitude at which time it falls into the Atlantic ocean slamming into the surface at high velocity. The twisted wreckage that remained then sank 14,000 feet to the muddy ocean bottom. Nearly a half century later, an expedition funded by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, found the broken pieces and raised some of them to the surface where they eventually made their way to various museums including the Cosmosphere. Incredible!
The lunar module pictured below was constructed by Grumman as a pressure test article. I enjoyed this exhibit particularly because it allows one to see the internal construction of the LM close up.
It's fascinating to see how similar the construction methods are to my own aircraft.
Apollo 11 moon rock.
Actual Apollo era mission control console.
Apollo 13 command module.
After enjoying the museum all day we availed Uber to get us back to the airport at about 4:30 p.m. After some complicated taxiing due to airport construction and my own inability to follow instructions, we departed to the west for a two and a half hour flight to Centennial CO. There were blue skies over Kansas, but the further west we went the more clouds were about. Afternoon thunderstorms over the Denver area seem to be mandatory in the summer months. As I was contemplating our arrival to Centennial, it was clear that we would be racing the thunderstorms that were building over the Rockies and moving east. The ADS-B weather radar that we have in the cockpit matched exactly the conditions that we could see ahead of us. This gave me the confidence to continue toward the advancing storm. We did have to fly through some light rain during the last half hour of the flight. For some added excitement, the air traffic controller switched runways on me at the last minute. The runway change was prompted by a switch in the wind direction as the storm passed over the field.
By the time we had the airplane unloaded at the Centennial Signature (FBO), the rain had stopped and the winds had calmed. Shortly after, my good friend Melanie arrived to collect us. Then she treated us to a nice dinner at Bad Daddy's burger bar. I was especially delighted to find that the restaurant offered my favorite Colorado beer: Dry Dock Apricot Blonde. Oh, happy day!
I've mentioned visiting Melanie and Centennial on other trips, so I won't go on about it now. I think it bears repeating that one of the great dividends of having one's own aircraft is that geography needn't be such a big impediment to maintaining connections with friends.
The next morning Melanie prepared a light breakfast and then we headed back to the airport. Although we would have much preferred a longer visit, we needed to get going before it got too hot and the trip home became unnecessarily turbulent. We still had to clear some of the highest parts of the Rockies. In addition, the mountains lie in close proximity to Centennial which necessitates a steep climb out in order to clear them.
As is usually the case, the highest terrain always lies inconveniently centered on our flight path. In this case, it was Mt. Evans at an elevation of 14,264 feet. Compounding the issue is that the peak is only 27 nautical miles from the western edge of the Denver class B airspace. We must fly underneath the class B until it ends and only then can we start climbing in earnest. Our climb rate is hampered by our fully fueled weight and of course, last night's huge dinner. To keep our engine cool, we need more airflow than our airplane's maximum angle of climb would allow, so we're not climbing as fast as I would like. As the minutes tick by the mountain peak looms large in the windscreen. It's not at all clear to us that we are going to clear the peak. It begins to feel like I'm playing chicken with Mt. Evans. The mountain, it seems, has a bit more nerve than I do. When I got within a 1/4 mile or so, I turned a bit to the right and then flew a climbing semi-circle around the peak.
Once we were clear of the peak we donned our oxygen cannulas as we continued our climb up to 14,500' and then up to 16,500' while looking for more favorable winds.
Way up high, we cruise across Colorado and Utah darting left and right to avoid the large puffy cumulus clouds that seem determined to block our path. Crossing into Nevada, we literally drop into Ely NV for our planned fuel stop. Arriving from the east, one is faced with an ear-popping dive to the desert floor after clearing the nearly 12,000' high mountain peaks a scant 13 miles prior. The fuel stop in Ely was mercifully short in the desert heat. We were now just 2 hours from home and our trusty aircraft was again clawing its way back up to some cooler air. Our return path across Nevada was only a little bit to the south of the eastbound path we flew less than a week ago. This time we flew to the south of the restricted air spaces around Fallon NV and then straight over Carson City NV and Lake Tahoe, before descending with the western slope of the Sierras all the way down to Grass Valley.
And so, we covered 3126 nautical miles and accumulated 26 hours of flight time in less than a week. We attended another Oshkosh in Wisconsin, saw the best space museum in Kansas, and visited a friend in Colorado. All of this because we built a plane in California.
