Heading to OSH for Campsites!
Done 7/14/09 - Posted 7/20/09
Well another year has gone by already and it's that time
again...time to get campsites for OSH. This year I decided to get
there a bit before the 2nd weekend pre-show, when I could have a good
shot at getting these particular campsites. Surprisingly, if I
had only needed 2 or 3 sites, I could have even found some in Paul's
Park! Once again, for the maybe 4th year in a row, I'm in the
same basic location...at the corner of Binder and Lindbergh, just down
the row and once again someone else snagged the first site on the row
with their tent, and someone snagged 4 sites at the other end of the
row. It's a popular place. Despite the changes this year,
the further out rows from this one were pretty much open other than a
random site taken here and there, and some down further.
I almost didn't go on this day. I got up and was going to leave
early and checked the weather and there was a huge mass of rain that
was coming my way. It actually was already upon us in the
morning, and everything you saw from the radar made it look like a
miserable day. So I waited another hour and a half and checked
again. Sure enough, you could see that despite all the rain, most
airports even under the rain were still VFR or at least marginal, and
the rain kind of dissipated as time went on, although the weather
system remained...it morphed a little. That was enough for me, I
took off with the girls and headed over to stake our sites! The
trip over was the standard 1 hour almost on the head. This year
we've all been so busy at work that we didn't have time to prepare the
vehicles and camper by this day, so I did two trips, following up with
a 2nd trip over on 7/18 to drop off our camper.
As you can see, we staked, taped, and marked our sites, getting enough
room to make everyone comfortable. We're probably a couple rows
or so away from RV-10 HQ, but I really like being under these trees if
possible, and it's a little closer to the gates.
For the trip home, I filed IFR using my iPhone's ForeFlight
software. A quick plug for this... It took me a lot of
nerve to fork over the $75 for an iPod Touch app initially, but not
long after I bought it, they added even more features. For our
Bahamas trip I found it invaluable to have an iPod Touch and Foreflight
to check the weather when I had WiFi. I used a Cradlepoint
PHS300 personal hotspot tethered to my standard EVDO Capable Motorola
VE20 phone. In our neck of the woods, there is no AT&T
3G, and to tell you the truth, AT&T's service sucks in my area, so
the VE20 gave me faster bandwidth than AT&T's 3G is capable for, at
less cost. Anyway, this combo worked well for me, but there were
a couple drawbacks. One is that I had to carry the cord and
cradlepoint with me to get WiFi. The other is that Alltel, my
carrier, doesn't use GSM and wasn't available in the Bahamas. In
the Bahamas I was exposed to my pal Ed's iPhone which worked in the
Bahamas, but better yet, on WiFi we could use Skype to talk using VOIP
for free and it worked awesome on WiFi. So after having this
combo for a while, I finally caved in and got an iPhone 3GS. Let
me tell you....first of all, every pilot should consider at least
getting an iPod Touch with Foreflight...it's the absolute fastest way
to get weather imagery and TAF/METAR/Aiport information that you'll
ever find, AND you can file flight plans with it. But, if you're
a pilot who does a lot of travel, you'd not regret getting a full
iPhone for a second. I've had mine a couple weeks now and I have
no buyer's remorse over this one. It has built-in GPS which works
well, and allows me to use the $10 "SkyCharts" app, you can use the GPS
with road maps (I also have the MotionX GPS software which rocks with
satellite maps), but Foreflight is an absolute DREAM with an
iPhone. For this return trip I said I filed my plan with
it. Well, while walking back to the plane I did a quick weather
check again of the route, then took the route and filed it with ATC
while I walked. By the time I reached the plane I was able to get
in, start up, and my clearance was in the system waiting for me.
It was absolutely AMAZING!
So the photos below tell the story....we took off, climbed out, and
they kept me down at 6,000 due to active MOA's all over central
Wisconsin, some of which started at 8,000. They actually routed
me around all but one of the MOA's, and I flew along through soggy
clouds and did the approach into KLUM. It was a very successful
day of flying. The trip on the 18th went much the same...it was
another PERFECT day for IFR flying even though weather was called as
VFR. We arrived at OSH and another plane had just gotten there
and had flown under the weather all the way in, while we flew over it
in sunny skies. It makes the trip so absolutely enjoyable when
you can blast up through a thick layer of soggy clouds into blue
skies! So as it stands right now, I am a 2009 property owner at
OSH, along with Scott and his family, Lenny, Vic, and Gary
Blankenbiller! Stop by and say "Hi" at the show!