Oshkosh - Airventure 2010

As part of a trip back to Minnesota to retrieve Marlys, Bill (who took advantage of the retrieval to not buy a airline ticket home) suggested that we head over to the EAA Airventure Airshow.

I had n0t been there since 2001, when I would take Derek over, so I was really looking forward to it.

So after a 20 hour drive to Bill's place to drop off Dusty in northern Minnesota, we got back in the car for another 8 1/2 hours for the drive to someplace near Oshkosk t0 layover before hitting the show bright and early on Wednesday morning.

After stopping in Wausau at about 9:30, we headed out at 5am to finish the epic drive east from Colorado.

We were walking around the show by 7:30 and one of the static displays was a Global Hawk UAV. You hear about these unmanned aircraft being used in Iraq and Afghanistan, but you really don't get a feel for how big they are until you stand next to one.

These are really a full size aircraft, look at the person in the background standing by the wing.

As was the norm in 2001, there is too much t0 see in one day, but that was the time we had.


One aircraft that really impressed me was this helicopter from Mosquito Helicopters in New Zealand. It was FAR Part 103 compliant (similar to ultralights, hang gliders, paragliders), so no special license is required, but I am sure much practice as it is after all a helicopter.

It was very impressive to watch fly. I may need to look into one of these, I wonder if they would have enough juice to hover at 8500 feet?

Mosquito also had a turbine powered one seater, using a aircraft APU as the power plan, it was very cool.

While waiting for the helicopter to fly, I watched a guy reading his for take off, and he had a somewhat "wired" look, like he had or was coming down from drinking too much coffee. It turned out that he flew his Kompress Helicopter from the south of the France to Oshkosk across Europe, the Atlantic and Canada to get here. I guess I would be a little wired too.

Bill and I spent 40 hours over the last 3 days in the MKX (luckily Bill did not suffer from gaseous eruptions like Herb did after Sunday's walk up Bierstadt), so today there will be no driving as we are back in beautiful urban-like Laporte, MN.