Flying to the Oskosh Airshow, also known as Airventure, is a dream of every pilot. It is the world’s largest airshow and becomes the busiest airport in the world for the seven days that the airshow is going on. I have been to this airshow now maybe five times, however this is the first time that I have actually flown into KOSH to enjoy the show and camp out under the wing of the plane.
This trip had bad timing written all over it, but I was determined to make it this year, since I missed it last year. Just prior to this event, I had moved my family from Platte City, MO down to Fort Rucker, AL for a new assignment. After getting to Alabama, I took my family to Destin, FL and then on to Panama City, FL from which I would catch my commercial flight to Memphis and then on to Kansas City. Once at Kansas City, I met up with my brother Bil, a MD-11 Pilot for UPS, who on this trip would assist me in navigating the challenging arrival into OSH as well as enjoy a day of the show with me. It was an honor to have him fly with me since we don’t get to fly together very often. In Kansas City, one of my Army buddies Reed picked us up and took us to the Downtown Kansas City Airport (KMKC), where we would fly out of for the very last time in Holly. We departed KMKC for a quick 5-minute flight to KGPH to get some fuel since the pumps were broken again at the downtown airport. After topping off the tanks, we departed at 3:15 PM for the 1:45 minute flight to Oshkosh. Our flight was IFR, GPS direct from KGPH to the DLL (Dells VOR) and then VFR on to the RIPON arrival point (which is also a small town), to FISK and then to KOSH itself. Airventure publishes its own NOTAMs for this airshow to handle the thousands of aircraft that fly into KOSH every year. IFR arrivals are limited to a slot system and is really limited only to turbo prop and jet aircraft. The VFR arrival procedure also known as the FISK Arrival has all VFR aircraft approach the RIPON waypoint. As a pilot approaches this point, he turns his transponder to standby (ATC can’t handle all the blips), and pilots must listen to the ATIS to get the current conditions on the arrival procedure, field conditions, and parking status. If there are many aircraft coming at the same time, ATC will put them into one of two holds. The first hold is just SW of RIPON around Green Lake. The second hold is around Rush Lake, just NE of RIPON and West of Pickett. Planes will arrive at either one of two altitudes. The first group will arrive at 1,800’ and maintain 90 knots or less. The second group for planes that can’t fly that slow, will arrive at 2,300’ and maintain 135 knots.
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| FISK VFR Arrival & Holding Procedure |
Once you arrive at RIPON the idea is to find an aircraft that is the same speed as you and follow him in at 90 knots and maintain at least ½ mile separation. If you can’t keep the separation, then you need to peel out and come back around and reenter. This is what happened to us as we approached. It was busy, but not busy enough to have to hold, so we found a white high-wing tail dragger and I slowed the Cirrus down to 90 knots (using 50% flaps), but we were starting to eat him up, so I peeled out to the North and reentered behind a faster brown high-wing tail dragger. Once we spotted him, we followed the rail road tracks NE towards FISK and maintained our distance behind the brown high-wing. As we moved along the arrival procedure, it was interesting to hear ATC getting after people to follow directions as published in the NOTAM – like “fly over the rail road tracks.” Really people, how hard is it to do that? Keep in mind though that you are not actually talking to ATC since they don’t want people talking on the radio. Once you get to FISK, they will identify you and ask you to “Rock Your Wings” to acknowledge your instructions. Our example was something like this: “white low-wing over FISK rock your wings, good rock, turn to a heading of 090 and follow Hwy N, contact tower on 126.6.” The brown high-wing aircraft was sent the same direction, so we continued to follow him, however as we approached the crosswind leg at the south end of RW18R, he started to slow down and ATC got after him because we were about to eat him for lunch. Next came the approach, which was really cool as well. Since we were landing on RW 18R we were told to expect a long and or long approach. Originally as we turned base towards the Blue Dot we were told to land on the Yellow Dot however at the last minute we were instructed to land on the Pink Dot and then “land before the Pink Dot if able Cirrus,” which we did. We touched down and turned right into the grass. It was awesome! I also have a really cool video of it and it’s neat to see how low we were turning base to final to land.
Once on the ground, you put up a sign in your window that tells the ground crews where you want to go. In our case we put out a GAC (General Aviation Camping) sign and followed all the flaggers. It was amazing how well orchestrated the ground volunteers are that marshal us around to the different areas. I was guided all the way around the airport to a place called “The North 40.” We ended up in row 533 which was right next to the road on the end and right next to the showers. We couldn’t have asked for a much better spot. That night I stayed with my brother, but the following days I spent camped out in the North 40. Staying at Air Venture was really cool since there is just so much to do. Everyone there is an aviation fanatic, you will find that everyone wants to just hang out and talk planes and flying. I met some great people that were neighbors to me. During the evenings there is much to do from watching movies to attending seminars on many different topics. There are some exhibits open late as well. My first night there (Sunday night) I was asked to attend a free social put on by Cirrus Aircraft that was awesome. Free food and beverages and I even got to talk briefly with Dale Klapmeier one of the founding brothers of Cirrus Aircraft.
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| Bil & I just after landing (Parked in the North 40) |
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| Planes, planes & more planes |
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| My "campsite" (Red building in background was the showers) |
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| My neighbors |
Another amazing thing that I got to do was attend the Tribute to Bob Hoover interview. Bob Hoover is an amazing flying legend and war hero. His stories about WWII were amazing and almost unbelievable. There are few people like him left in the world and I’m really glad I got to attend this interview.
After four days of fun, I decided that I needed to get moving since bad weather was coming. My calculations (and the NOAA weather predictions) showed that on Wednesday afternoon, OSH would be getting hit with a huge thunderstorm. Many of my fellow pilots were planning on departing early Wednesday morning, so that they wouldn’t get stuck on the ground from the rain soaked turf. When we woke up, we were surprised to see that the rain was already upon us and it rained constantly for about five hours. I did some last minute shopping since I couldn’t get an IFR slot clearance. Around noon time I was barely able to taxi in the wet grass and had to keep my speed up to prevent getting stuck. I made my way though the wet grass and mud to RW13 which was being used as a taxi way and followed the guidance to line up behind a bunch of other aircraft on taxi way A for departure on RW27.
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| Waiting for the rain to pass |
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| VFR Departure Procedures |
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| In line waiting to depart |
Throughout the departure process you don’t use your radios as all. I put a sign in my window that said “VFR”, to show that I was departing using visual flight rules and as I got to RW27, I was told to “line up and wait” on the left side of the runway while a yellow Columbia 400 lined up and departed on the right side. As soon as he was wheels up, I was cleared to take off. The interesting part about the departure procedure is that you must fly runway heading until clear of the Class D airspace and you must stay at or below 1,300’ MSL or 492’ AGL. This is basically like flying nap-of-the-earth for 4-5 miles which was really fun. I followed a Piper Lance and the Columbia until the Columbia and I got right next to each other and then did a little informal formation flying until we were clear of the area and all the arrival traffic. Once cleared, we waved to each other, he peeled left and I went full throttle and quickly climbed up to altitude to get clear of any incoming traffic arriving. Once at altitude, I proceeded direct to Southern Wisconsin Regional (KJVL) to get fuel and eat at the airport café.
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| My informal flying partner |
After stopping for lunch and fuel at KJVL, I departed for Smyrna, TN (KMQY), a 2:15 flight. I stopped here for the night since I got a late start and I since I could really use a good night sleep. Total flight time for the day was just over four hours. I parked the plane at Smyrna Air Center and got a room at the local Holiday Inn Express. The next day, I had a beautiful day to fly the final leg to Dothan, AL. My last leg of just over two hours was very uneventful as I descended through the cumulous clouds to land at our new home at KDHN. This was truly an amazing trip and I look forward to doing this many times in the future!
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| Descending into Dothan, AL |
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