Oshkosh or Bust 2021 Day 7 July 26 EAA Day 1

Oshkosh or Bust 2021 Day 7 July 26
(EAA Day 1)

Well here it is the very first day of EAA 2021 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
Monday morning started off kinda early for myself and Rob, as we were both up at around 0530 and we decided that we would just get on the road and head to the airshow.

The drive up Interstate 41 north makes the trip pretty quick to get to the exit for Air Venture (this is what EAA Airshow is actually called). Once off the Interstate we followed the signs that would take us to the parking area and eventually to the world of everything Airplane related.

Yeah well the reality hits once you get on the side roads and you begin to experience the traffic jam of waiting to get to the parking lot areas for Air Venture. I shouldn’t have been too surprised to see the amount of traffic trying to get into the area and eventually to the show. But man it seemed like it took us forever to get to the parking lot areas, but once in the lots it took us a matter of just a few minutes to park and make our way to the gates.

Now when you get to the gate area, you have two choices, one is to go and purchase your tickets to get into Air Venture, the other is to go over to the pre-purchased area and obtain you wrist band from there. Luckily Rob and I had already pre-paid for our tickets and we got our wrist bands pretty quick and proceeded to walk into the airport. Keep in mind that you are walking on to an active airport and that you must also go through security and that they do check your bags. It doesn’t take very long and is actually pretty dang quick.

Once inside Air Venture you are pretty much hammered with everything you can imagine that talks, screams or just says Aviation. Every company you can think of is there showing off their different airplanes, avionics, engines and services. Some of the companies include Beech, Pilatus, Boeing, Northrop-Grumman, Garmin, Bose the list goes on and on.

At this point I told Rob, that I thought we’d head over towards the main runway and find a spot to put our stuff and just hang out, I already wanted to come back later in the night or early in the morning to obtain some pictures anyway, but really just wanted to hang out and not move around a lot.

He seemed to agree with this and so we found our place to sit down and hang out for the day. It was next to parking area 390 which is located right next to the main runway and also put is amongst a lot of the small planes/ experimental type aircraft that people build on their own. We also seemed to be centrally located for the day too.

The rest of the day progressed slowly, with many aircraft landing, taking off and of course taxing by us as we waited for the afternoon airshow. At one point there was a team doing sky writing above the crowd at EAA (got pictures on the phone of this), they spelled out “EAA” and even did a huge smiley face.

The one constant at the show was the EAA’s Ford Tri-Motor Plane taxing by us and taking paying passengers into the skies over Oshkosh for a 15 minute ride. Everyone has told me that this is a really cool ride and that I should try it at least once, honestly not sure if I want to do this or not, but we shall see.

As the afternoon progressed, some of the planes that were to participate in the afternoon airshow began taking off to the skies high above Air Venture 2021. Finally show time!! It was 1430 (230pm) and the afternoon activity of the airshow was about to begin.

The first group up was the SOCOM Parachute Team, these gentlemen jumped out of a plane above the airport and presented the National Colors and then a group of ladies proceeded to sing the National Anthem. While this was happening, the aerobatic team called Aeroshell, flew circles around the SOCOM Parachutist and once they were on the ground, left the area (temporarily) until it was their turn to perform.

The first main performer of the afternoon was Michael Goulian who performed acrobatic feats in his limited Extra (http://www.mikegoulian.com ). He was really great and just whipped that plane through the skies. I’m pretty sure that if I had gone up in a plane like that, I would have been sick as hell.

The next two groups after Michael were the Aeroshell Aerobatic Team (http://www.naat.net ) and the GEICO Skytypers (http://www.geicoskytypers.com ), both of these teams fly North American T-6/ SNJ Texan Trainers and are something that should not be missed. The Aeroshell team fly four (4) of the big Texans, while the GEICO team fly’s with 6 of the big birds. They performed some really great maneuvers with these big planes, and just did an amazing job. If you get the chance to check them out please do so, it’s hard to believe that these big planes can move the way that they do.

Right after these performances, the sky was filled with various formations of North American T-28 “Trojans”, Beechcraft T-34 “Monitors” and other warbirds. These groups did a number of passes over the skies of Air Venture 2021 and of course flew by the crowds a number of times before landing.

There was a North American P-51D “Mustang” and a Vought F4U “Corsair” that also performed a number of high speed passes while the trainers were flying above us all.
So far the day was not too bad, during this whole time, I kept looking towards the skies in the hope that the Boeing B-29 “Superfortress” nicknamed “DOC” would arrive or that Rob would at least find it somewhere on the grounds of the airport. But after a little and some on line researching, I found out that “DOC” was broken and having maintenance performed in Michigan and would soon arrive to the local area to participate in the week’s events.

Once the warbirds cleared the area, we saw performances by David Martin (http://www.davidmartinaerobatics.com ) in his Beechcraft Baron, that was really neat. This guy flew that Baron all over the skies and seemed to keep shutting down his engines just tossing that plane all over the place. Kinda reminded me of watching Bob Hoover when I was a kid.
Then Kyle Franklin (http://www.franklinairshow.com ) took his Piper “Cub” to the skies and did a really silly performance of a guy that stole a plane (FYI, of course the plane wasn’t stolen!) This is almost like the act that we usually see above the skies of Chino or Miramar every year that is performed by Kent Pietsch in the Jelly Belly Interstate Cadet.

I believe at this point most of the days events were pretty much done as the clock was fast approaching 1700 or 1730 (5 or 530pm) and many of the people that had arrived earlier in the day were fading away pretty fast.

At this point Rob and I gathered up our gear and proceeded to the parking lot and headed back to Fond Du Loc for the night. We both agreed that the colapsable wagon was gonna be used for the next day so we didn’t kill our backs (mine especially) with all of our stuff.

Once back at the camper, it was now time to download and back up all of the pictures that were taken for the day. All in all, I snapped about 12K worth of pictures, of which I would say maybe 10% may be used for something. My friend Craig Rembold would say to me that “Your holding the hammer to much”or “spray and pray”.

Rob and I discussed the planes for the next morning, and I really wanted to get out early to get some sunrise photo’s. So we both agreed to take a shot at this. But that’s for the Day 2 Blog.

SO I’m done with this one and will begin work on the Day 2 Blog in a few.

Thanks to everyone for their support.
Semper Fi,
Frank Sellin
1/9 Everywhere