EAA AirVenture Oshkosh, WI 2011

Last night, I was bored and started going through my old pictures. Just looking at them and reminiscing. I came across the pictures I took when I went to AirVenture. I have to admit, I completely forgot about it. I only went the one time, which was July 27, 2011. I thought about going last year, but I let it slip by. I'm not sure if I'm going to go again this year.

I know this isn't RC planes, but it is a great aviation event to go to. I thought I would give everyone a reminder of this event because if you have any interest in aviation at all, this is a mandatory to go to at least once.

I took almost 500 pictures while I was there and I was only there for one day. I didn't see everything. And I certainly didn't take photos of everything. The planes where parked by category and I completely missed the War Birds! (I know! what's wrong with me?)

I went before I knew what a lot of the airplanes where. I just took photos of what I thought looked pretty or interesting. Even now I'm not sure what all of the planes are so my captions are rather bad for these photos.

For more info and tickets:

www.airventure.org

Videos

Here is a quick video I made out of most of the clips I took. I tended to start the video late and then stop recording early. I was bouncing back and forth between taking videos and taking photos. I don't explain any of the clips, I hope they speak for themself. Listening to the announcer helps explain some of the clips.

My Video:

Here is a much more professional video that was clearly made by someone that spent the entire week at the event. I included this because it was taken the same year that I went and it does a much better job of showing everything this event has to offer.

Not my work. All credit to the video's publisher:

Photos

Entrance.

Attendees checking out a... jet trainer?

Two seater Auto-Gyro. At least I think it's a two seater. I have to admit, I had no idea what this was at the time and only learned about them more recently. This was a booth that was showing them off to sell.

I believe this is a kit plane. Again, being shown off to sell.

Newly restored B-29A "FIFI". (Again, I had no idea what this was at the time, but apparently it was a big deal.)

Before the actual airshow for the day that I was there, they had WWII planes flying in formation while the announcer was telling the history of the planes.

I know this one is a Corsair.

Corsair with wings folded up.

I believe the plane flying in front is a F-86 Sabre. I don't know the others.

The air show started off with sky divers. I think there where about 20 of them.

This is very interesting. This is a glider with a jet engine mounted on the roof. I overheard a conversation some people near me where having, and it sounds like he can either have the glider towed or he can take off with the jet engine. However, it sounded like it uses almost all of the fuel to take off. I didn't take any video of this, but he would glide for a while then punch the jet engine to climb and he would do some aerobatics. It was very graceful, almost like he was dancing in the sky.

I only altered this in size. He is flying upside down. If I remember correctly, he was in the middle of a loop or roll.

I believe he was trying to do some sort of ribbon cutting limbo thing.

I don't know what type of plane this is, but I know you're not supposed to fly it like he was.

Climbing for a loop.

Middle of doing a loop.

Low pass.

The air show got interrupted so a Jet Blue Airbus(?) could take off and get to work.

I remember that this was a female pilot.

The airshow ended early because of approaching thunderstorms. They actually did jet cars during the "break" but I left because it was a long day and I had an almost 2 hour drive to get home.

Here is the Piper Cub and the RV that it landed on. I have footage of this in my video.

Here are some more photos of the privately owned planes that people had on display. I quickly walked through some of them while I was leaving. Again, I completely missed the War Bird section. I don't think I captured just how big this event is in these photos.

Again, here is the official site of this event so you can learn more about it:

www.airventure.org

Don't feel bad if you can't make it this year. There is always next year. I'm lucky enough to only live about 2 hours away from this event and I only made it once after a few years of thinking about going. I can tell you that you want more than one day. So you can definitely justify using some vacation days to go. ;)