It had been 3 years since my last trip to Airventure, and this time I went with Daniel. We both flew to Milwaukee (direct via Southwest) and then drove the last bit with a rental car (1h30 each way, not too bad). I was actually flying from Osaka to SFO that day, and arrived in time to connect to our Southwest flight and arrive tuesday evening around 22:00 at our hotel. This time I picked the AmericInn because it was walking distance from one of the gates (still had to take a bus/shuttle, but it only took around 20mn once on the bus, so not too bad).

Nice to see the heat concentrator during the flight, again

This year, I probably went to too many talks, so even though we had 4 days, I didn't have the time to see all the expos carefully enough once you add watching at least one airshow in the afternoon. I could have used 5 days, or next time I'll need to cut the airshow (sad) or just see fewer talks (although at least half of them were quite worthwhile, so it's a tough call).
Here are pictures of various parked planes, and warbirds:

that is a _very_ long nose

Airbus had a hybrid-electric plane that could burn fuel to recharge batteries if needed

and this

an experimental heli trainer with a single seat? mmmmh...

prop and engines that retract back inside the glider? cool...

And then, there was this beast with a big turbine engine. The video barely expresses how loud this plane was:

Center stage had interesting planes on display every day:

Then, we had warbirds:

I didn't have/take/spend enough time to go see the multiple booths and tents, but here are a few pictures anyway:

very cool, sky surfing behind a tow plane, what could possibly go wrong ;)

augmented reality glasses would be great if the technology was ready

in the meantime the made up demo looked cool :)

Lots of other tents, with random plane bits to buy, or other things:

this one will buff right out :)

you can learn how to build your own plane

I was even able to get my global entry card fixed, sweet! :)

Our 2nd morning, we got up early and showed up at the museum to do a heli ride at 08:00 and avoid the long 1-2H waits later in the day:

A few pictures from the museum, they seem to change their displays:

Next, time to mention the many talks I went to, some were quite good:

I've seen Dick Rutan talk several times, but enjoy it each time

a U2 landing on an aircraft carrier, madness...

pilot of the original U2 vs the newest glass cockpit U2

Patty, nicely signing autographs

Dick Rutan

And last, but not least, pictures from the airshows: prop planes, jet planes, and a long demonstration from the canadian snowbirds. Then we also had the night airshow and the fireworks:

tora tora tora, attack from the Japanese planes

lucky us, we got a U2 overfly

The snowbirds were awesome:

And then came the night show and fireworks:

with a wall of fire as finale

This was a good time as always, even if I'm a bit sad to have missed the olden days when you could see an SR71 flyby, or a concorde doing a touch and go in front of the audience :)