Oshkosh Or Bust 2021 July 28, 2021 EAA Day 3

Oshkosh Or Bust 2021 July 28, 2021 EAA Day 3

Good morning, on from the Air Venture airfield and right at section 390 next to the very active main runway.

Well after kinda learning from our mistake (I guess you could call it that) we came out to the airfield a little bit later than we did on Monday. And honestly that plan worked out much better, we were able to get onto the field right at 7am as the gates opened and we were able to take our time walking around and getting back to our little spot for the days events.

The weather wasn’t that bad and the skies were clear to cloudy, but we knew that there was a weather front moving in later in the day and based on what we saw on line and what our wives were telling us, it was going to be a nasty storm.

It was a pretty eventful and busy morning here at Air Venture as the main runway and taxi way that was in front of where Rob and I were sitting was jammed packed with every type of aircraft imaginable. You could see nothing but planes for what seemed like forever and the folks here at Air Venture had them stacked up on two (2) different taxi ways and the planes seemed to be taking off every minute or two and we even had planes coming into land too. But it was all very orchestrated, as one might think especially if you think about how the big airports like Chicago’s O’Hare or Los Angeles’s LAX handle all of the big plane traffic.

At one point while walking back to our little spot on the flight line, an Air Force/ Air Guard McDonnell Douglas F-15 “Eagle from the Louisiana National Guard took off and shook the crowd up for about 2 minutes before departing the area. I didn’t get any pictures of her leaving but know that a few other photographers did.

Rob and I sat and watched this orchestration of movements of women/ man and machine from the time we got here (which was about 0730) until just before the start of the afternoon air show (which was about 1430). I estimate that approximately 200 (maybe more) aircraft had departed the area to seek shelter from the in-coming storm. That’s a lot of airplanes BTW…

At 1430 the afternoon air show began with the SOCOM Parachute and the playing of the National Anthem. Then just as the SOCOM Parachute team landed an Air Force U2 made a couple of passes past the crowd, and then climbed up and departed the area. It was much of a flight demo of the Lockheed U2 “Dragon Lady” but beggers can’t be choosers.

Right after the U2 “Draggon Lady” flyby’s the Goodyear Blimp did a flyby and a flight demonstration, which is really unique in a way, since you don’t get to see the Blimp do much of anything most of the time.

Once the Blimp departed the area, we were entertained by the Red Bull Air Force/ Parachute Team, if you haven’t seen these ladies and gentlemen perform before you won’t be sorry. The do a really great job of whipping the planes, helicopters and parachute around the skies and of course make it look so simple.

During this part of the airshow I began to look to my north and noticed that the skies were getting dark which meant that the weather front was now beginning to move in. The weather service did say that the storm wasn’t meant to hit us until later in the evening.

During the Red Bull flight demonstration the warbirds began to taxi out and get ready to take to the skies above Air Venture. This time we had a number of trainers, like the “Yellow Birds” or Stearman trainers, O-1 Bird Dogs (Light Observation) and then a Vietnam Era Helicopter and Forward Air Control plane also flew around the area. Not to put the pilots/ planes or the EAA Organization down, but a lot of the people (myself Included) were not overly impressed with the warbird demo on this day. We wanted to stay for the remainder of the show, but couldn’t as I had made previous engagement. So at about 1600 we left the field and headed back to the truck and then eventually the camper.

Once back at the Camper Rob and I cleaned up for a New York second and then proceeded over to the American Legion to meet up with one of my Marines that I hadn’t seen in 23 years. It was awesome seeing Sgt Jeffrey Bowen yesterday and it was even better to be able to catch up on a lot of things that I missed after I got out of the Marine Corps.

At around 1900 (7pm) we all left the American Legion and proceeded back to the Camper for the night and to get some sleep. Yeah that didn’t last very long as the storm that was predicted for the evening finally made it’s appearance at around 2330 (1130pm) and then both Rob and I had our phones going off with Emergency Alerts about the weather and then of course all of our friends and family sending messages making sure that we were both safe and making sure everything was okay.

The storm was something else, there was a lot of lightning/ thunder/ rain/ wind/ tornado warning, and this seemed to last for about three hours or so, with Emergency alerts continuing to go off throughout the night. Finally at about 1am or so, I decided to go back to sleep and call it quits as I didn’t think the storm was going to be much worse and that it was beginning to pass and die out.

Well that is pretty much the day in a nut shell, Day 4 of the Air Venture is fast approaching and it looks like it will be a nice cool day today and hopefully we will get to see a lot more flying to day than we did yesterday.

Until tomorrow.
Semper Fi,
Frank
1/9 Everywhere