Oshkosh, 'b Gosh

The EAA AirVenture Fly-In and Airshow wrapped up last week. "What's that?" you say? It's the world's biggest fly-in airshow, held at Whitman Field in Oshkosh, WI. Because of that, everyone calls it just "Oshkosh".

My alter ego, Doug Reeves, posted his photos and recorded narrative about his first trip to OSH. It's a pretty good first-hand experience of the show.

Oshkosh really is amazing, if for no other reason than the diversity of the aircraft there. Where else will you see a F-16, P-51 and P-38 flying formation over hundreds of parked Cessnas and planes people built in their garages?

Since EAA is all about building your own airplane or restoring an old one, you find homebuilts at Oshkosh. TONS of them. And the #1 homebuilt by far is the Van's Aircraft "RV". RVs are simple, sturdy and fast. Currently, people are building the 2-seat side-by-side RV-7 and RV-9, the 2-seat tandem RV-9 and the new four-place RV-10. With over 4,600 of them completed, you often get a "sea of RVs" at OSH, like Doug's photo here.

So why buy one and not build? Well, two reasons. The first is time - I don't have much to fly as is, so what makes me think I have 600-800 hours of time just sitting around? The second is ability - I'm not sure that I want to fly something I've built. Maybe if I did some non-aviation metal projects first...

Maybe Jellybean and I will make it there next year as part of the Grand Tour I've been wanting to do....