Oshkosh Day 1 (for us)

Let's just start with, WOW! That is a huge event. There are planes everywhere. Most are owned by people who flew them in for the event. Fields are filled with planes and their owners camping next to them. Manufactures also have planes on display. Military planes are there, new and old. Lots of old WWII planes. Companies selling aircraft parts and accessories are in 4 big hangers. Planes were flying all over the place and that was before the airshow.

The airshow was the highlight of the day. There is an airshow each afternoon for 2.5 hours. They are also celebrating 100 years of Naval aviation. So the beginning of the show had tons of WWII planes flying. I swear there must have been 60 aircraft in the sky at the same time. There were two big groups. One had 4 elements of 4, that's 16. The other had 5 elements of 4, that 20. So there were 36 planes just in those two groups. There were others circling around at a bunch of different altitudes, including helicopters.

36 planes in this picture!

Most planes that are in airshows have a lot of power to perform the aerobatics. One guy was flying an old tail dragger (did you look it up?) with only a 90 HP engine. His partner drove an RV down the runway. The RV had big platform on the top. The pilot LANDED on top of the moving RV and then the RV stopped! The driver then started down the runway again and the pilot took off. That was really cool. Sorry but we didn't get any good shots of that.

Oh, one more thing. Dan had some fun with Pete today. One of the first stops was at the Aircraft Owner's and Pilot's Association (AOPA) tent. They are having a daily give away so we signed up for that. They also were handing out stickers. If you had one on, the 'prize patrol' might see you out and about during the day and give you a prize. Dan put his sticker on the front of his shirt. Well, Pete didn't hear about the sticker thing, so Dan put it on Pete's back (without him knowing). He had it on all day. It would have been perfect if Pete won a prize today but he didn't.