AirVenture | Day 8

July 25 | Sunday is the day people leave this magical week to return home to responsibilities and loved ones. It is a bittersweet parting, but with the intention of seeing each other again in a year.

A number of the Pietenpol pilots were stopping by Oshkosh on their way home. Greg Cardinale made arrangements by phone with the EAA ultralight people to land on the grass ultralight field. The normal approach to land at Oshkosh is to fly to Ripon, follow the railroad tracks to Fisk, rock your wings when the FAA controller identifies you with something like “white high-wing”, “blue taildragger” or green and white low-wing”, then follow directions to land without ever talking to the controller.

The Pietenpols often don’t have a radio and are unable to keep up with the requested 90 knots, or 100 miles an hour airspeed in the landing pattern. The solution is to bring them in for a landing 500’ below the rest of the airplanes, and have them fly directly to the grass runway. Greg phoned from the nearby airport at Hartford where the group landed to let the air traffic controllers know that they would be landing in a certain number of minutes.

I had arrived just about the same time they did, although they had left over a hour before for the 90-mile trip from Brodhead to Oshkosh. I had a little different experience than I had on any of my pervious trips to AirVenture though.

I dipped the tanks and saw that I had about thirty gallons left from the leg from Norfolk. My fuel burn is between ten and twelve gallons an hour, so I figured I had plenty for the forty-five-minute flight plus a little reserve for holding.

Then I remembered something Mike Harris told me when giving me flight review. The three most useless things for a pilot are the runway behind him, the altitude above him and the fuel in the truck on the ground.

I topped off the tanks, taxied out and did my run-up before taking the grass runway 27 at 8:30 am for departure behind a late-departing Pietenpol. I climbed away and set course for Oshkosh at about 3,000’ MSL, leaned for cruise and settled back for the short flight.

As I approached Ripon, I saw targets popping up on my iPad showing other aircraft headed the same direction. The closer I got to Ripon, the more targets showed on the ADS-B in display. I grumbled that I must be coming in behind a mass arrival of a type club, when airplanes of the same make and model gather at an outlying airport so they can fly in together and thus be parked together.

I tuned the ATIS and got the atmospheric pressure, the wind direction and speed and the runways in use. The tip off that this wouldn’t be the normal chaotic Oshkosh arrival was when I tuned the approach frequency and heard the controller telling everyone to hold where they were until they could get the planes over the railroad tracks on the ground.

They had incoming traffic in five different holds all the way from Green Lake to west of the airport at Portage.

I veered around and started down the line toward the end of the increasingly long row of targets on my iPad. It looked like some insane conga line stretching for miles.

When I got to Portage, I found another airplane ahead of me over the highway. He was following another airplane ahead of him, who was following another airplane ahead of him, etc., etc., etc. After making more turns than I could count, I heard the controller finally release the first hold over Green Lake, and then heard him release the subsequent holds down the line.

The airplane I was following was doing a good job of holding the required 90 knots at 1,800’ MSL, so I kept swiveling my head to see where any other airplanes might be. There were some flying left-to-right above me and some right-to-left below me. As we conga-lined down the lakes, we came to the tracks, turned and followed them to Fisk, waggled our wings and made our turn to base.

The airplane ahead of me and I were directed to runways 36 left and right. The plane ahead turned final and landed long on the dot the controller had specified. I turned final just in time for some idiot to taxi across both active runways so the controller ordered me to go around for right pattern to 36 right.

I flew the pattern and was turning base when another airplane turned in front of me for 36 right instead of 36 left. The controller called for me to go around again, then turn crosswind quickly because the Chinook helicopter on final to runway 27 was too close.

There I was flying formation with a Chinook! Not a nice, neat formation, but more high-angles of bank formation.

Third time was a charm. I came in hot and high, slipped it down, added power to get to the red square and got it on the runway without permanent damage to the airplane. A normal pilot would have just landed without all the drama, but where’s the fun in that when you have thousands of people watching and are being live-streamed on the internet.

I finally was directed to my parking spot at the end of row 147 in Vintage Camping, tied down my plane, set up my tent, gathered what wits were left, and headed down to registration. Dinner was with Rafe Thomset and Jim Roberts at Wendt’s, a great seafood restaurant on Lake Winnebago.

A good meal with good company, a hot shower, a last call home, and I was ready for bed. I was at Oshkosh again.