OSH 2011 with N104CD

OSH 2011 with N104CD and Friends!

See Also: Pre-show Camsite Staking Trip Report with photos

This year I had probably the best OSH experience ever, especially with the great company we get to be in! Even better than in years past, we were able to host both Scott and Sean and their associated peeps for a night pre-OSH and then all fly in together to the show. This gave an added opportunity for some photos and formation on the way to OSH, which makes the trip over even more fun for everyone. Before I get started, let me give a big thanks to Scott, Jim and Trina Beyer, Nyle, Sean, and Andrea for the photos they took. Of the photos below, many of them were taken by them. More continued within the photos...


So with all the beautiful women (see above) loaded up, we set off for OSH. There was Wx coming in, so we headed out to get in front. These types of days are the BEST flying days there are...clouds make the perfect background for aerial photos!




After an hour or so of having a total blast, it was time to do the approach into OSH. We came in as a flight and landed on Runway 18 doing the "Roush approach" to land....minus the great scraping sound. Runway 18 is a fun approach to do, if your'e flying these smaller planes.


We actually beat the camper drivers there, so we all hung out for a bit before we set up camp. Arriving pre-show is a great way to relax with other builders. I'd encourage any builder to come on the weekend pre-show, as it's much more relaxing than once the show starts. On Monday when the show kicked into gear, we of course watched the airshows often. The Honda Jet below copied their paint scheme from Sean. Their engineers must have really liked Sean's paint. :)


This year Airventure did really well and had an awesome band. In some years, they had previously hot bands, but once the band members have turnover and the band doesn't sound the same, there's nothing you can do to keep a once popular 70's or 80's band hot. This wasn't the case with the REO Speedwagon concert! I've always liked their music and I found that they sounded almost identical to what they did back when I was in college. Kudos to whoever set that one up, and "well done" to the band! After that, we did some hanging out at the campsites again.

My new Tie-Downs from Abe's Aviation This year for OSH I wasn't going to risk airplane damage like what happened to folks at Sun-N-Fun this year during the tornado, so I got myself some great new tiedowns from Abe's Avation. Check out my Tiedown Write-Up for more info or click the picture below. Not long after the show started, the RV-10 arrivals were really packing it in. We had the same corner of the lot as last year, minus the soggy ground. NEW PRODUCT ALERT! Apparently apple has come out with the ingenious "assmount" holding system for your iPad!

One of the mornings we had our big adventure for the week. Thanks to Jim Beyer, another RV-10 builder who's currently flying a beautiful V-Tail Bonanza, said he'd be happy to go out flying and have both of our wives shoot some three-plane formation photos for us, from his plane! Thanks again Jim and Trina, this was very very nice of you! We quickly jumped on that idea since the weather was beautiful, and we headed out for some great formation photos. When shooting 2 planes, it's very easy to get some good looking photos, as the 2 planes can be in almost any alignment to eachother and look nice. As soon as you add a 3rd, it becomes MANY times harder to get everyone in alignment, so you shoot tons of photos hoping that at least some of them turn out good. We ended up with quite a few nice photos. These are just a sampling but are some of the better ones.



























After all that formation time, we all gathered together back at camp. That's Jim and his wife Trina in the 2nd photo below.

To continue the week we did lots of airshow watching, some shopping, and generally relaxed and had tons of fun. One of the other activites I did this year was to fly home and bring a couple of the kid's friends to stay with us at OSH for the latter half of the week. This proved to be a little challenging in that we started to get a little weather for a while mid-week.

Timing is everything though and if you watch for where the weather is you can often skirt around it. These 2 photos below are for my trip home. I was able to depart VFR from OSH, but filed a plan from a point along my route where I could pick up an IFR clearance and finish the flight home IFR. As I flew along in beautiful smooth skies, the ride was perfect.

Back at OSH, there were a couple of minor mishaps on the runways, one of them was an F-16 that somehow ended up with a collapsed nose gear.

This year we also did something that we've skipped the last couple years...we took a trip to the seaplane base. It's a beautiful spot...worth the trip to see.

And of course, it wouldn't be a trip to OSH without a couple of trips to Redgranite Quarry for a swim. Highly recommended if you bring a family or stay the week at OSH!

One other bit of coolness is the people that OSH brings in. This is a picture of the Air Cam that we saw Harrison Ford arrive in. I always like the actors best who have that love of aviation! You just never know who you're gonna see at Airventure!

Meals are always fun at OSH...getting to go out to a variety of places or sometimes cook at the campsite. While this year's trip to Fratellos was highly disappointing (probably won't go back there next year), we did love the pizza again at Red's Pizza. It's a family place that's been around many many years and they make some truly awesome pizza. Call them when you're in town...they're at 920-231-3290.

This year we even stayed for the entire show...we came on Saturday and left the second following Sunday! That gave us the chance to watch the big airshow on Saturday and see the Saturday Night airshow. I sure wish they'd move that to Wednesday or do 2 of them each week. These photos don't do it justice...go to the Airventure website to see videos, but it was great!

So after almost 9 full days of OSH, we'd had our fill for a few weeks and we headed home. Can't wait to see what next year has in store!

Site Home | N104CD Home