July 30th: Last Day at Oshkosh, Part One

It seemed awful quiet the next morning when I woke up, and when I checked my phone to see the time I was surprised to see that it was already past 6:30...I hadn't slept that late all week! I pulled up the latest METAR on my phone and it immediately made sense...

...the field was still IFR!

Dave and I went back over to the cafe in Warbirds for our last Oshkosh breakfast, then wandered around the planes for a little while.

That's Jack Roush in the straw hat, standing in front of his P-51, Old Crow.

Dave and I eventually made our way back to the forums for our first stop of the day: a seminar about what to do when your engine is making metal, presented by none other than Mike Busch! He's a really well known mechanic and writes for a lot of the aviation magazines; his articles are one of the first things I read anytime I get a new magazine.

His seminar was really interesting (plus we bumped into my buddy Mitch there, too). After that Dave left to go check out some other planes while I headed over to another seminar, this one by Budd Davisson about tailwheel flying. It was funny and full of good stuff, and by the time he started talking had become standing room only. I'll have to check out some more seminars the next time I get to come to Oshkosh...there are so many!

I bumped into Dave right outside the seminar when it was over, and we decided to head back to the plane for a little while to do some packing and flight planning. The weather still looked good to fly back all in one shot the next day, so we came up with a rough idea of the route we'd fly and spent the rest of the time packing what we could. Sherman stopped by for a little while, too, so we talked for a bit and said our goodbyes just in case we didn't bump into each other again. Dave and I grabbed some lunch at the North 40 cafe, then headed back into the show for the afternoon.

I made sure to stop by to check on the One Week Wonder one last time. It was only the third day of construction and it was already starting to look like an airplane!

FedEx had flown in one of their huuuuge cargo planes (I think it was an A300), and it was sitting right in the middle of Boeing Plaza. You could take tours of this one, too, but Dave and I skipped it since it was almost time for the airshow.

Wednesday afternoon's airshow lineup. All of the planes were sitting there, ready to go!

We had left our chairs out on the flight line so we already had good spots waiting for us. Shortly after we sat down, almost all of the Breezys fired up and taxied away.

We also got to see a Thunderbird. They were going to be flying over the weekend, but Thunderbird 8 came in at the beginning of the airshow on Wednesday to do some recon for the weekend's shows.

He taxied by nice and slow after he landed so everyone got a good view.

The afternoon's showcase featured a lot of neat homebuilt planes. This is one of the Dyke Deltas...

...and one of the Long-EZs flew, too. I love the shape of these!

All of the Breezys got to fly, too. It seems like there's nothing to these...you just sit in a little seat out on the front in the open air!

Mike Goulian was one of the first aerobatic pilots to fly.

The GEICO Skytypers were flying around in the background while he was flying, too.

I thought I had a big camera lens...these guys totally had me beat!

I was really excited about one of the next pilots: Kent Pietsch. He's one of my favorites! He flies an Interstate Cadet with Jelly Bellys painted all over the side and does some great comedy routines. This time he did a power off routine. He climbed up, shut the engine off, stopped the prop, and did a full aerobatic routine...

...before landing and rolling to a stop with his spinner in his assistant's hand. I would love to be that good in an airplane someday!

He even threw little bags of Jelly Bellys out to the crowd as he rode by in the convertible after he flew.   :)