AirVenture 2015

I had the distinct pleasure of begin able to fly into AirVenture again this year with a buddy of mine in his new SR22G5.  I had to catch a South West commercial flight to Kansas City at 0630 in the morning on 18 July to link-up with him, but from then on it was all first class!  The plane I got to fly from KMKC to KOSH was a 2014 Cirrus SR22G5-loaded.  

The awesome Perspective avionics package

We departed IFR out of KMKC at 1340 in the afternoon with plans to fly to the FISK VFR arrival into OSH.  Flight time was 2:30 and mostly VFR.  As we approached FISK we were above a cloud layer and descending trying to get below it.  My copilot tuned in one of the radios to FISK approach to see what was going on ahead of us and we quickly realized that flying in VFR at this time was going to be a huge ordeal, since there were a lot of planes in VFR holds over Green Lake.  In a normal world we would have seen all the traffic on our traffic system, however because of the large number of planes flying into AirVenture, we all have to turn off our transponders as per the NOTAM, so we didn’t have the situational awareness that we normally would.  This large number of planes and no transponders is another reason we decided to stick with our IFR clearance since it’s just flat out safer!  Since we already had an IFR arrival slot, we requested vectors back to KOSH and the ILS27.  This turned out to not go quite as planned either, but this is normal when you fly to Air Venture.  We popped out of the clouds as we approach the inbound localizer and at that time we were asked to conduct a hold three miles east of KOSH since there was a mass arrival of Cessnas approaching.  Very quickly there were planes above us and below us as well all were holding in VFR over Lake Winnebago.  After a short amount of time we were cleared for the visual to RW27 and put it down on the first dot and taxied to the FBO and park the plane in a COPA reserved area.  Another great reason to be a member of COPA.

 

Prepared for anything!

For this trip we had a group of eight of us that had rented a friends house for the week.  It’s really kind of crazy, to be in someone else’s house like this, but they make good money doing it and we in return get a great place to stay that is much nicer than any hotel.  The group of us came from all corners of the US, all of us flying in Cirrus to partake in the week’s events.  Day one was focused on plane watching.  We had a premier spot right next to the taxiway on RW27, right in between the first and second dots.  We got to see a lot of cool planes land and more than I care to state, scary landings.  I think there are way too many people that get caught up in the “land on the dot” that they forget basic airmanship and try to force the plane to land and it results in bounces, high stalls and just flat out bad landings.  

Some of the group on the taxiway of RW27

Front row seats provides for spectacular views of landings!

To wrap up the day we all had VIP invites to the Cirrus AirVenture dinner and concert with Dierks Bentley.  It was an amazing event and we also got to see the New Cirrus SF50 (C2 I think).  This plane was one of the test aircraft, but it was amazing nonetheless.

Dierks Bentley

Cirrus SF50

Day two, which was the first day of AV was dedicated to hitting the tarmac and checking out all the stuff. This year, like all years was amazing.  There is definitely not a lack of things to drool over at AV.  We concluded this night with a COPA dinner at the Hilton, where I got to see a bunch of old friends that I hadn’t seen in a while.  Day three was more of the same.

 Wednesday came way too fast and we headed to the airport early to try to beat the rush out and get back to KC.  As we approached the airport, I noticed that nobody was flying, which can only mean one thing.  Unfortunately the airport was closed due to a Piper PA46 that had crashed at the end of RW27 trying to land.  The cause appeared to be the dreaded turn to final low speed stall, that we all read about so often.  When you watch all these planes land, you can see this forming over and over again, but luckily we didn’t see any actually stall.  It was a grim sight and nothing that anyone wants to see especially during something like AirVenture.   Several hours later the airport was opened and we departed on RW18L (which is actually a taxiway) for an uneventful flight back to KMKC.

With another AirVenture homage complete, I once again have the major itch to buy another airplane.  It’s hard to not when you get to fly something as amazing as a G5, but with the costs of aviation skyrocketing and the potential user fee issue coming back, I think I will continue to sit on the sidelines and save my money.  I hope to buy another plane and hopefully another Cirrus, but time will tell.