π
2011-07-29 01:01
in Flying, Nflying, Oshkosh
|
Due to a badly scheduled track day on thursday in the middle of Airventure, I ended up taking a hellish red eye from SFO to Chicago (arriving at 03:15 my time) and then a connection to nearby Appletown. I ended up arriving on friday morning at 09:30 and 10:30 at the door due to horrible traffic with very little sleep, and went around the grounds as quickly as I could to see as much as I could before sunday afternoon, when everything would be over.
Considering the tough trip and little time on hand, thanks to having been there before and knowing where things were and how to best optimize, I managed to see several interesting talks, see virtually every exhibit, and most of an air show (unfortunately it was stopped half way due to weather). I also had a lovely dinner with my friends at Seattle Avionics (food was kind of opportunistic since I had neither the time to get proper food, not that there is much proper food on the EAA grounds anyway. I had the worst cheeseburger in my life ever).
Anyway, let's get to the pictures:
new avionics
nice to see a full size turbocharged engine
there were lots of nice sims to try
Lots of planes to be seen as always:
the 787 was here for display and visits, line was way too long though
burt's boomrang
harrier
rotocopters
you don't want to be probed by this guy :)
huge engines, payload capacity, and fuel tanks
Terrafugia was back with their V2 design:
It's a bit of an improvement over the areocar :)
Visiting the insides of the B29 Superfortress was cool too:
Someone also tried to sell me a pipistrel. Nice little plane to fly around, but eh I'm used to slightly faster planes with nice things like autopilots :)
Like every year lots of collectors bring their own fighter planes:
The other half of Oshkosh, is the aviation museum. Its displays are still good, but the best part is the talks that some world famous aviators give there:
new section on RC planes
voyager, the plane that flew around the world non stop
kind of cramped inside
talk on faster than sound airplanes we might have one day to replace the concorde
Spaceship 1
But the best part is Dick Rutan telling the story of his flight around the world in Voyager built by his brother, Burt. It's a thrilling story:
Saturday evening, while waiting for the night show, Ford had a nice Blues Brothers Show:
they were actually quite good
And this leaves us with the pieces of airshow I caught:
weather turned bad quickly, rest of airshow was cancelled for that day
And just to make things interesting, they started doing a night airshow the previous year:
And that was it. after 3 days of mostly bad food and running around to make it with the time I did have, it worked out pretty well in the end. At the Appletown airport, before leaving, I tried the heart attack food they do there, fried cheese curds, and fries smoltered with cheese and bacon :)
|
