July 26th: Cramming It All In, Part Two

Somewhere during the warbird showcase...

...we were able to track down a few more buddies! Ken and Doug are both based at HWY, too, and had one of their pilot buddies with them, too. (I think his name was Bill or Will...it's slipped my mind.) They had flown in the day before in Doug's C182 and were staying for the week. It was a lot of fun to have so many airport buddies there!

I did occasionally remember to watch the airshow, too, especially when Sean Tucker flew.   :)

His ribbon cuts are always fun to watch!

Greg Shelton and Ashley Key flew again, too.

This plane was absolutely bananas. (And loud.) Screamin' Sasquatch is a Waco with a jet engine. It was pretty cool.

Matt Younkin flew the Twin Beech 18. It's one of my favorite acts for how graceful it is.

Skip Stewart's act is just the opposite...he does some crazy things with his plane!

Greg Koontz flew the Xtreme Decathlon. I liked when he flew under the ribbon.

He did come back for the ribbon cut, though.

We got to see the little Sonex jet, too. It always looks like so much fun.

And it's so tiny! I could actually build one of these if I wanted to. (Hmm...maybe this will be my next project after the RV-10...)

One of the coolest acts of the day was Manfred Radius. He flies an aerobatic glider routine set to music, and after how high-performance so many of the other acts are, it was absolutely mesmerizing to watch. I was able to catch this picture right as he released from the tow plane.

This was definitely one of my favorites of the day.

They had a Heritage Flight toward the end of the show with an F-16 and a P-51. I grabbed a couple pictures as we walked over to find...

...Jen. Since it was our last day at the show, it was time to say goodbye. It had been nice to catch up with her again!

After a quick stop at the plane, we met up with Ken and Doug for our dinner date at Ardy & Ed's. It's a root beer/burger/ice cream place; the girls wear roller skates when they bring out your food (which is really impressive!). It's a popular Oshkosh hangout, so it was fun to catch up with everyone there.

Someone was skywriting while we were there, too.

Ardy & Ed's is right under the final for Runway 27, so we got to see lots of fun stuff fly right overhead while we ate. We hung out for a while, talked a bunch, then they eventually took us back to the airport.

Our timing wound up being perfect...we got back to the airport gate just as Dutch texted me that they were back at their plane. Mark and I grabbed our bottle of rye, then walked back to their campsite and hung out for a while, sharing drinks and talking airplanes. We eventually made our way back to our campsite, grabbed showers, and went to bed. It was a nice way to end our time at Oshkosh!