OSH 2010

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When OSH time finally arrived, we still had plenty of rain in the area.  Sean was flying Scott's N104XP in this year, while Scott drove their new camper in from Salt Lake.  The weather worked out for Sean until he made it to the MSP area...only 25 minutes from my home base.  Not wanting to fly an airplane that was not his, that he had little time in, and little time with the specific avionics, Sean took the logical safe step of just landing when the weather got below VFR minimums, and I flew over IFR both ways to pick Sean and his dad Nyle up for the night's stay.  We hoped the weather would be agreeable the next day, and it generally was....it wasn't a full green-light go for OSH, but the conditions looked manageable, and the next day we made it to the show.  Scott was to arrive later that night, after dark.  We hadn't had any rain for nearly 24 hours, but the grounds were all soaked, and all motorhomes were being parked out of the grounds.  Since we had high-ground sites, we thought we'd be OK, and they let us in.  The campgrounds were unpassable for many campers though for nearly the whole week.  With a great tip from Bob Condrey on buying 2x2' square 3/4" plywood squares for supporting the camper jacks, we went to Lowes and bought the wood before Scott got there.  We bought 2 full sheets of 4x8' plywood, which would turn out to be one of the smartest things we could have done. As Scott showed up, we had him drive non-stop into the site, on the highground.  Unfortunately, to squeeze between some trees, he had to slow down to a stop, and the wheels sunk in enough that soon the truck was burying itself.
After getting the truck and camper stuck, we separated the 2, and still had to be careful getting Scott's truck out.  We were making mud fast.  We placed our wood squares in front of the tires, and I used old pieces of RV-10 crate to fill the gouges in the ground.  We developed a method of quickly moving pads from behind to the front of the tires, so he could slowly drive forward, reposition, and reverse to hook up the trailer, then continue forward into the site, driving on pads of wood the whole time.  This worked perfectly and was the only thing that saved us from not getting the campers in place.  When his dad's camper got pulled in, we never even started without our pads, and it went in very easily.  So a tip for future wet years...buy the wood, buy THICK wood, and make a continuous road to drive on...it works!
Luckily we got them in place that night too.  The above pics show the storms that came through.  We had some heavy rains, and plenty of thunder.  At one point, a poor old guy in a motorhome scared the bejeezes out of half the campground when his motorhome's alarm system got wet and wouldn't shut off...at the same time the winds were high, and it sounded exactly like a tornado alert.  But, it all soon passed and we woke up to a soaked campground again...with a river running through our sites.  We were parked on high ground, but the central area was just a flowing river.  After buying a thick rubber mat for in front of the camper, we were set to live it out for a day or so...and by maybe Monday it was all dried up again.  Through the week the ground never hardened up, and we left the planes parked most of the time, but many airplane parking and camper parking areas were never opened throughout the whole week. Below you can see our iphone/ipad/ipod charging station.  We came prepared as nearly everyone on our site had an iphone.  With my old Odyssey PC925 for daytime, and a generator for morning and night, we were set to keep everything charged for the whole week!
We had the very pleasant opportunity to finally meet Anna, Scott and RaNae's new baby!  With luck, she'll grow up never missing an OSH!  More pics below of the weather, which was frequently tenative, with hail storms coming at times, to keep the plane owners terrified.  Man that weather was something this year.
Then before you knew it, it was time to head out for the week.  We had a great time, but I forgot to get some shopping done that I had wanted to do, and as usual, didn't see nearly as much of the show as I wanted.  But I got to hang out with some really cool people, Sean's dad being a new one of them, and we just plain had a blast!  On the way out of OSH, flying the departure, I had the added fun of blowing the doors off a mooney that was also departing.  I'm sure my fuel flow was higher than his, but we can easily outclimb them and have similar flows at altitude.  Now we're already looking forward to next year, as long as the rains don't stay as bad as this year.

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