A Journal, with Pictures

On Wednes­day July 30 I flew from Day­ton, Ohio to Fond du Lac, Wis­con­sin to attend the EAA Air­Ven­ture 2014. This is the biggest GA (gen­er­al avi­a­tion) gath­er­ing in the world. Air­Ven­ture is a hap­pen­ing and my objec­tive was first to meet my broth­er, Mike form Ore­gon, attend the COPA (Cir­rus Own­ers and Pil­tos Asso­ci­a­tion) Oshkosh din­ner, see a lot of avi­a­tion friends and take in as much of the exhibits has I could in one and a half days. There are hun­dreds of ven­dors, hun­dreds of exhibits and thou­sands of air­planes, includ­ing lots of them that are fly­ing. There is a air­show every day with the Air Force Thun­der­birds per­form­ing on the week­end. There are large dis­plays of new air­craft with pri­vate pavil­ions out doors, with ven­dors such as Cir­rus, Cess­na, Piper and many oth­ers, plus four huge hangars with hun­dreds of small­er booths with com­pa­nies such as Avi­dyne, Garmin, and many many oth­ers. In addi­tion there are the dis­plays of restored air­craft and then a huge park­ing area for those that fly into Whit­man field. It is a hap­pen­ing. Once I land­ed I drove a rental car the 20 min­utes to Oshkosh and met Mike for lunch. We then start­ed with the exhibits, and I start­ed with Avi­dyne who had just final­ly achieved a major mile­stone and sure enough there were smiles all around. We checked out the Cir­rus exhib­it with lots of inter­est in the Jet they are work­ing on. We also talked to the Evo­lu­tion guys, with 56 fly­ing it is a beau­ti­ful air­plane, oh to be 20 years younger, I would def­i­nite­ly have one. We then wan­dered around check­ing out inter­est­ing air­craft such as one of Burt Rutan’s cre­ations and also saw the new Con­ti­nen­tal (Mer­cedes) Diesel engine for my type airplane.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the most inter­est­ing air­planes that we saw was a restored British Fairy Gan­net, mil­i­tary car­ri­er based anti-sub, ear­ly warn­ing and util­i­ty air­craft. Its an engi­neer­ing mar­vel, with wings that fold twice that car­ry fuel, two tur­bine engines turn­ing two props and in the con­fig­u­ra­tion on dis­play a crew of three. One of the two engines could be shut down when in a loi­ter­ing on sta­tion mode. Its hard to design an ugly air­plane buts the Brits did it with this one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We then made a fast pass through the area with the restored classics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We watched a lit­tle of the dai­ly air­show then head­ed for the COPA Din­ner. This event is put on each year by vol­un­teers Doug and Car­rie Wood and is usu­al­ly sold out , this year being no excep­tion. The COPA Pres­i­dent, Andy Niemy­er , made a few announce­ments, there were a cou­ple of short pre­sen­ta­tions on safe­ty, then Pat Wad­dick, Cir­rus Pres­i­dent addressed the group. The pri­ma­ry rea­son for attend­ing is social­iz­ing with oth­er COPA mem­bers, which was inter­rupt­ed by the announce­ments and Car­rie and Doug raf­fling off a huge array of items donat­ed by sup­pli­ers this year val­ued at over $30,000. Thanks spon­sors. In gen­er­al every­one had a good time and did have time to catch up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day two we con­tin­ued to take in exhibits and made it through the bal­ance of the exhib­it hangars. We attend­ed the sem­i­nar for the new update that I will have done on my R‑9 avion­ics at the end of August. This was put on by COPA board mem­ber Trip Tay­lor. We also went by a spe­cial EAA project called the “one week won­der” which has a team of vol­un­teers build­ing a kit air­craft in one week at the show. I am par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in War Birds so a good part of the after noon was spent dodg­ing rain show­ers and see­ing the war birds. We took in a lit­tle of the air­show then called it a day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We had din­ner with Mike’s part­ner Dan and Dan’s wife Judy at a local restau­rant skip­ping a Cir­rus cook out, which turned out to be the right choice since it poured rain. We were up ear­ly the next morn­ing and Mike and I flew to Day­ton, so Mike could make a short vis­it. It was a good show and vis­it with my fel­low COPA mem­bers, but I had not reached avi­a­tion Sat­u­ra­tion yet. Onward to Day­ton avi­a­tion attrac­tions. My over­all impres­sion was there was­n’t much real­ly new, cer­tain­ly some inter­est­ing things, but noth­ing earth shak­ing. Its a great gath­er­ing of avi­a­tion nuts and hope­ful­ly as the econ­o­my improves the rate of inno­va­tion will pick up.