We have been at Oshkosh for 3 days now and at last I feel like I have caught up on my rest. I am surprised at how long it has taken me to feel OK again … I guess it was not just the lack of sleep but also the stress and the change in the time zones.
Last night we attended the international visitors party hosted by the EAA and as can be expected the beer and laughter flowed … It looks like there are about 200 South Africans at Oshkosh this year – usually the largest numbers of international visitors are firstly from Canada, then South Africa, Australia, Germany and the UK. I heard total numbers of attendees at about 700,000 and over 10,000 aircraft.
Yesterday at midday the AirbusA380 departed … that is one huge aircraft although somehow once I had walked around underneath it, it’s not quite as big as I imagined it would be. One thing that amazed me is how slowly it can fly. I heard someone say that it did one of the flypasts at just 105 knots – it just looks so incredibly slow I guess because of it’s size.
In the afternoon James and I did a presentation at a forum in the Honda pavilion where one of the people who attended our talk was CarolAnn Garrat. She flew around the world in 7 days in a Mooney last year … quite humbling to realise how many people have flown around the world before and how quickly some of them have done it. Have a look here http://www.alsworldflight.com/index.php.
Near to where the Sling is parked is another special aircraft … we met the pilot – a guy by the name of Art and he is flying from the south pole to the north pole – have a look at http://www.airventure.org/news/2009/090617_polar_pumpkin.html. That is one thing about Oshkosh – you meet interesting and crazy aviators from every corner of the globe.
We are supposed to leave Oshkosh tomorrow morning to head west but there is bad weather across large parts of the USA so we have decided to delay our takeoff until Monday. Another change is on our route … instead of flying over the Rocky mountains we have been advised to deviate slightly south to Santa Fe and avoid the unpredictable weather and strong winds that can make flight dangerous when flying quite low over the Rockies.
Yesterday we also had an opportunity to watch the airshow for the first time and it was quite something. What I love the most is watching the second world war fighters (especially the Mustang P51s) flying. The airshow is really world class with aerobatics, huge formation flights, jets and then attractions like simulated bombing runs and simulated pylon racing …
It is now 10 am and James and I are off to the show to sort out a few technical issues on the Sling. Once we are at Torrance in LA we will be doing an oil change, welding the cracked prop controller mount and giving the Sling a really good inspection in preparation for our Pacific crossing. I get the shivvers every time I think about it …
That’s it for nowMike
