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 :)

I got there on wednesday late afternoon, in time for the evening airshow (shown later down), but I'll give the summary in thematical order.

I'll start with the airplane expo pictures:

Honda still had the same jet for display, hopefully it's that much closer to being for sale :)

Happy Plane :)

The Icon prototypes are coming along nicely

Nice paint job

The cirrus jet is still moving along

The terrafugia transition did a test flight for us

that one is pointy all right :)

Then, a few pictures from the booths:

one of the electrical planes was still there

google glass like device for planes and pilots

Yves Rossy had a booth about his Jetman wing

As always half the attraction are the planes that people bring:

planes of course get parked by type

this looks about 100 years old :)

yes, you can also bring your own Russian jet :)

Now that I've seen the basic things, I've taken more times to see some of the talks, and that's one of EAA's strongest points. Thankfully I got to catch a few talks from famous people like Chuck Yaeger, the two Ruthan Brothers, Dirk flew around the world nonstop in voyager, and Burt known for inventing some of the most innovative planes, including the ones going almost reaching space. You also get to hear from SR71, U2, and F117 pilots, and new pilots like Yves Rossi and his wingman jetwing.

Yves Rossi

Flying, you're doing it wrong :)

that remotely launched drone didn't work too well

Poor Bob Hoover is getting quite old, but still comes and gives talks

Some of the talks are also at the air museum, and I still enjoy visiting parts of it:

Then, there is stuff that doesn't really belong, but is there anyway, like companies selling cars or other stuff. A few nicer pictures:

original car from Batman and Robin

the jet truck was so wrong and so impressive :)

you indeed want to be nowhere close when it's running (more below)

Honda had its Asimo display. I had already seen it at Disneyland, but since I had a bit of time this time, I figured why not, and went to see it again. It is indeed the exact same show, although it is pretty cool:

Now, the next cool thing at EAA is the great list of impressive airshows. I'll start with daytime airshows. The best airshow performers come for the chance to perform there, including the guy who brings his personally rebuilt harrier. Extra treats this year were Terrafugia who came to fly their car for us, and Jetman who also flew, although at 5000ft for his own safety, making it hard to see him and take pictures that far:

And a nice addition are the night night airshows, fireworks, and the wall of fire finale. Night airshows actually start just before sunset and go into the night:

The video doesn't convey how incredibly loud this truck was :)

I got there too late on wednesday, but some pictures from the thursday airshow:

almost feels like the power to weight ratio of my RC planes

you're not flying straight, son...

still not flying straight...

ok, now you've done it, you're falling...

great, another showoff :)

and the redneck show shooting at their own airplane

landing on top of their truck

ok, that's not supposed to happen either :)

Taking pictures of Jetman was as exercise in frustration, he was moving very fast and very high, so I had my zoom at 60X and following a fast target sure wasn't easy. Still:

he was easier to catch on the way down.

And the finale:

And more pictures from the saturday airshow this time (they're different every day). Saturday, they re-enacted the attack on Pearl Harbour:

very nice collection of zeros

dogfighting

After that, more planes from later wars:

wing suits

damn, another one who can't fly straight either

there you go, you goof off, you stall and fall :)

microjet

They had shockwave, the jet truck, doing a demo:

ok, ready to go

holly shit, it hot and loud, let's get the fuck out :)

After the airshow, they had blues brothers re-enactors who were damn good:

By the time they were done, it was time for the 2nd night show:

And the fireworks with the wall of fire finale:

And that was it for EAA Airventure/Oshkosh:

I had planned to spend most of Sunday at Airventure, but in the end I took of my friends' offer to fly back in his Centurion. This took all of sunday (14H, that was a bit gruling), but eh, I didn't have to take a bus back to Milwaukee to catch my southwest flight back, and got to write a lot of code in the back of the plane when the scenary outside was kind of boring (the first 2/3rd of the trip over flyover America :)

Alliance Municipal Airport, Nebraska, mid america :)

Greg, my former coworker and pilot in chief that day :)

Eventually, we got to more interesting terrain when approaching Utah. I really like the terrain between there and Nevada:

what on earth was this, a bit west of Salt Lake

Our second fuel stop was at Wendover, just by the Utah/Nevada border. This base was involved in training for the 2 atomic bombs that were sent to Japan. They had a small museum inside, although there isn't much left. The end of an era:

From there, it was back to Palo Alto:

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 :)

As you can see the flightpath went north somewhat to avoid restricted airspace, and then south for the way back to avoid thunderstorms over the rockies.

Flight From Palo Alto to Oshkosh

This year I picked the club's Mooney Acclaim and an experienced CFI. Unfortunately, the plane's payload is abysmal and between the two of us, we could only put 70 gallons of fuel instead of the full 102 gallons that would have allowed for a flight with a single refueling stop.
We left soon after 7 in light IMC conditions (typical morning overcast), and picked up some favourable winds which put us in KRKS with around 15 gallons to spare.

IFR Departure from Palo Alto

Lake Tahoe

Salt Lake City's Salt Lake

bis

Fuel stop #1

Weather wasn't bad, but we picked up our IFR flight plan for the second leg as there were still some clouds around our altitude. My forcast said that winds were less favourable at higher altitudes, so we stayed at 19,000ft. In hindsight I kind of regret not knowing what the true airspeed at FL250 was going to be. We only got around 200kts TAS at 30.5" MAP lean of peak.

IFR over the top

Bad weather on the way, but south of us

We were watching the weather on the way, but thankfully the bad weather was moving south and allowed us to land at Appleton without problems and on schedule (before 20:00). I totally could have landed at Oshkosh proper, but I figured we'd try Appleton this time (a reliever airport) to have more leeway on when we could arrive and leave. In hindsight, the $50/1H-ish cab ride each way actually made it longer and more expensive than staying at Bassler FBO at Oshkosh proper, but eh, you can't always know.

Second fuel stop

Weather getting worse, even closing up behind us, but clear ahead

On the ground at Appleton, just north of Oshkosh

Just 45mn before sunset or so

Flying the Acclaim wasn't too hard, but I totally sucked at landing it, apparently because I didn't quite get the nose up picture during the flare which I thought to be the same than the SR22/TB20, but wasn't the same at all.

Planes on display

The first day, I visited the Airbus 380 despite the hellishly long line.

The terrafugia roadable airplane was moving along nicely

heavy load carrier, mostly used for carrying water and dropping it over fires

the border patrol UAV

Overflies

Although I missed the simulated army overflies because I'm a moron, there were still many to see

Airshows

Of course, Airventure still had its daily airshows

The Redbull Helicopter, still doing what helis aren't supposed to do

The Spaceship 1 Carrier

Flight back home

Flying home was not going to be a piece of cake due to bad weather forecast, but thankfully it passed through in the early morning and we were able to take off by 11 local time. However, this put us quite behind schedule.

my flyties came in handy for staying on the grass

ready for a flight back

bad weather just passed us, ready to go

first fuel stop was Winter airport

fuel was self serve, based on the honor system (you wrote your own fuel use and receipt)

at least we were still able to fly high enough to benefit from O2 (headwinds died down as we proceeded forward)

a bit on IFR, allowing me to log a few approaches

Evanston, a good place for our fuel stop and deciding how to proceed ahead

I was joking that if we walked to the end of the runway, we'd be in Utah. I was actually right :)

thunderstorms over the rockies were nasty, but we found a course around them

well, kinda, with some help from ATC

clouds at FL200 gave us traces of icing, but nothing too bad

nice sky pictures though.

250kts in the descent, woohoo! :)

home, sweet home

Flight times were 8.5H to fly there (air hobbs) and 9.5H to fly back with the headwinds and weather detours. Not as fast as the supposedly 220-240kt airplane should have delivered (POH quoted 220kts+ for our density altitude, which was apparently a sack of lies, by a whole 20kts), but still pretty good and a personal record for me :)
A big thanks to my trusty CFI, Don Styles, for salvaging my poor landings in the plane, and teaching me about dealing with weather, which was part of the point of this trip (we rarely have "weather" in california :) ).

More pictures