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OSH 2019 started out as they have for many years now for
us. We hopped in th plane and went over early to get
campsites. The campground is both full, and empty,
based on your perspective. It's empty of a lot of
campers when we go, but much space is already taken, which
makes it a challenge for us to find the best contiguous
grouping of sites that we can. In the end, we always
find something that works, and this year was no
different. We also ended up needing our well
coordinated space, because the coming rains would have
prevented us from having a workable layout if we hadn't
planned well.
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A week before OSH, we started to get our typical July
storm fronts moving through. I grabbed these screenshots
just for keepsakes.
We spent our time preparing everything, and when my
Florida pals were near, I jumped in the RV-14 and met them
in-flight for a welcome to our place, where we would stay
overnight so we could go in as a group later.
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We try to get anyone who can from our group to get here a
day early, leaving padded time for weather, but also to
allow us to have a little fun on the water. We've got a
nice river in town right near KEAU, and we get some
waterski and wakeboard fun in.
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After we had our skiing done, we left that afternoon for
one of my other favorite events of the year...our
formation flying on the way to OSH. We have a blast
just taking turns flying off eachothers wing.
Unfortunately most of our pics are not close, as we focus
on the flying, but we all get some practice on the way,
and the 1 hour flight to OSH goes incredibly quickly that
way.
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It was very apparent that 2019 was going to start out wet,
with the forecast we had. The question was, how wet?
When we flew in, we were lucky to have a nice dry and
sunny day, so we got on field and got our parking spaces
well before the mess started. By the next day,
however, when the people driving in were to arrive, the
rain was imminent. And when it rained, it rained
long and heavy. We knew from the previous sloshkosh
that there was NO WAY to get large campers or motorhomes
in on the grass without making major ruts, and mess and
mud that would keep our campsites miserable for days to
come, so we used our knowledge of Sloshkosh 1 to prepare
before the motorhomes showed up. We purchased
sheets of 3/4" plywood and cut them into 2'x2'
square. It takes a few sheets to get the job done
properly...and you need 3/4" for sure! As it turned
out, we also needed some 2x12 boards cut into 2' lengths
as well...but that was mainly because of the ignorant
people who tried driving or especially towing trailers
down the roads WITHOUT such wood. Below you see the
first person who got stuck right by our campsite, and
after watching them stuk for a while, we were forced to
help get them out in the middle of the rain storm because
they were stuck exactly where our motorhomes would need to
pull into our campsites. You can see how the wood
works, overlapping our squares and driving forward only
2-4' at a time, depending on how many axles you
have. With them out of the way, we had a clear
path...for a while, to get our motorhomes in.
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We were at the end of a long road on grass, and to do the
job right, it takes about an hour to get a motorhome all
the way down the road. Our first one went real well,
and the road stayed good, with no huge ruts in the
grass. Unfortunately, while we were doing our 2nd
motorhome, people with 4x4 trucks tried to tow their
campers down the road, without regard to protecting the
road itself, and caused monstrous ruts that made our job
harder, as we had to cross the rutted tracks. You
can see one of them in the first picture above. This
caused us to get stuck, which would not have happened had
they left the road in good shape. As it was, the
areas where we drove, with wood, were left almost
completely un-rutted or marked in any way. Below are
some pictures of trying to cross the ruts they had
left. That was the hard part. But, as you can
see from the pictures below, with our large group of hard
workers, we got the job done and had a great
time! We were very lucky, too, because after
we got in, there was no way any other campers of similar
size would get in for a few days. Nobody came as
prepared as we did, and many caused real horrible ruts in
roads and required pull-outs by tractors.
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Future
mud wrestling wives!
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Job
well done, crew!!
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With Monday and sun arriving, it was time to start the
show! It was largely like most other years for us,
but we got the addition of Mitchell, which was very
nice. Colleen was down in Tennessee doing an
internship and we flew her back just for a few days so she
wouldn't completely miss out on OSH.
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Mitchell's
first OSH!
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Partners
in crime
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Our
first experience with VR!
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Packed
arrival to OSH
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David,
doing
his Tim imitation. Dang kids!
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Airshows
are sleepy time
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Fun
Flying Time during OSH!
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The
Seaplane Base
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I ran into another eAPIS app in the vendor hangars.
I've been using FlashPass for years with great luck, but
see that now there's another player in the market, helping
to make our eAPIS filings better.
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Colleen's
Display forher Internship Project
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Swimming
Time!
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The night airshow is one of the biggest highlights of the
entire week, and 2019 it was better than ever!
Wednesdays went great, but Saturdays we had some sorry
about a storm going through, that ended up passing just
South of the field. The end result was a great night
airshow, so we were all happy. These pics don't do
anything justice, but the video above has some of the
fireworks, and those were spectacular.
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Departure day we had storms at home, but it was all
isolated rain cells only a couple miles across, so we were
able to weave our way around and get in with no problem.
Another OSH accomplished safely!
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