Oshkosh or Bust The Blog July 30, 2021 EAA Day 4

Oshkosh or Bust The Blog July 30, 2021 EAA Day 4

Good morning how the hell are yeah and greetings from Air Venture 2021.

Well we weathered the storm from Wednesday night, no damage done to the camper or in the local area (around us anyway). Rob talked to his wife this morning, and was told that there were a number of downed trees in the area from the night before and that some areas in Kenosha were without power, thankfully the girls were good to go. Now they were beginning to get ready for their trip up to the Wisconsin Dells.

We once again arrived at Air Venture 2021 pretty early and were able to once again get our little slice of space next to sign marker 390 right next to the main taxi way. The morning was actually pretty nice and cool and the sky was slightly overcast, the weather people were saying that it wasn’t going to get very hot today and the temperature was only supposed to get up to about 86 degrees or so.

As per the course of events, for the past few days, Rob went for a walk to check things out and I hung out by the our spot, typing up the days previous blog and snapping pictures as needed and such. This has been great for me in a sense that this is all that I wanted to do to be honest. Although a little later in the morning I did walk around and check out some of the exhibit halls and I did that just because.

All morning long and into the early afternoon many different planes took the skies around us and returned, some obviously did not return. Many of those that did leave the day before due to the storm were coming back into Air Venture from where ever they took off too.

A little later in the morning one of my Marine Brothers, David Cox and his family arrived to enjoy the day with us here at Air Venture. It was great to see him after about 20 years and finally meeting his wife and children.

By early afternoon the UPS 747 and the Samaritan’s Purse DC-8 were preparing to leave the area. The UPS 747 was the first to be pulled out from Boeing Plaza, they pushed the plane out onto the active runway and pointed her towards the south end of the field. The UPS Crew finally fired up the big “Jumbo Jet” and after about 10 minutes they release the breaks and headed down the runway and towards the heavens. It was amazing to me at how quiet the plane was, I honestly never thought that she’d be that quiet at a full power run up and take off.
About 10 minutes after the UPS Departure, the Samaritan Purse Douglas DC-8 was pulled out towards the active runway and fired up here engines and then proceeded to taxi to the south end of the runway. The cool thing with this DC-8 (and what was explained) is that this plane had to be re-engined before the FAA would sign off on the air worthy certification. The original engines on the DC-8 smoked just a little bit… Eventually the DC-8 took off too, and again was pretty dang quiet.

Then the afternoon airshow took off, with the opening being performed once again by the SOCOM parachute team and after that the Air Force did a SAR (Downed Airman) demonstration that included an Lockheed Martin AC-130 Specter gunship a EC-130 Communications and an MV-22 Osprey. When that concluded, the Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II’s did a tactical demonstration which is awesome to just see all the time. Then General Dynamics F-16 “Fighting Falcon”/ “Viper” demo team did a quick demonstration over the field and with the aid of a Lockheed P-38 Lightning flown by Mr. Steve Hinton and a North American P-51 Mustang, the made several passes doing a Heritage Flight Passes.

Once was this was done, it was the Navy’s turn to do the Heritage Flight, this consisted of one (1) Vought F4U Corsair and one (1) Goodyear FG-1D Corsair which was painted in the colors of NAS Glenview, IL and two of the Boeing/ McDonnell Douglas EA-18 Growlers from VAQ-129 “Vikings”. The group did the same thing as the Air Force and then once they were down, the “Viking” Growlers did a demonstration of their planes and showed off what they were capable of doing. At the tail end of the demonstration as the Growlers were preparing to land, to McDonnell Douglas F/A-18F Super Hornets from VFA-106 “Gladiators” came in from behind and broke over the field and eventually landed.

After these demonstrations, we were able to see several flights of L-39 “Albatross” jets make some passes and then the Douglas A-4 Skyhawk and Mikoyan-Gurevich MIG-17 took to the skies and chased after one another for a bit. It was really neat to see the Skyhawk in the air. I know I got some great pictures of her…

After all the jets had landed, we were treated to a demonstration by Jeff Boerboon and Dell Coller in their YAK-119 and the Jet Waco Biplane. This Is extra awesome since both of these planes also have jet engines attached to their planes. These two pilots bounced these planes all over the sky. If you get the chance to check them out do so.

It was at this point that we left the show and head back to the camper, we were supposed to catch up with my Father-In-Law and get prepared for the events on Friday.
Well that is it for now, a little shorter than the previous days, but people get the jest of it.

See you tomorrow.

Same Bat Time, Same Bat Channel

Semper Fi,
Frank
1/9 Everywhere