Oshkosh - 2019

Avi8or2012 said:
Did anyone else feel as though the fly-overs dragged on during the airshow for too long? I was listening one day to the air boss, and some of the performers were being rushed and seemed frustrated while the fly overs went on for a while. My wife and I love the mass fly overs, but it went on for a long time.
I agree with @Grum.Man . It seemed a bit lackluster for 50th. We had a blast, though.
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P.S. missed you this year at DKB. Got in around 7 and back out by 7:45 or so.
 
The jets came by, then about midfield hit the afterburners. Turn and head downwind, enter the final. Rinse and repeat. Two or three times, every day.
 
Grum.Man said:
P.S. missed you this year at DKB. Got in around 7 and back out by 7:45 or so.
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Well, we are based at nearby DPA (I live close to DKB and thought it was more convenient last year), so we left for OSH at 0600 Sat am and arrived at OSH by 0715 with NO traffic to contend with...although that meant we didnt miss 2 rounds of storms on Saturday, either. Lol
 
Got out Saturday with no fuss at all, a nice change from the giant conga line I've waited in previous years. I did pull the trigger on a air of Lightspeeds, glad I did. Got a couple hundred bucks off buying them at the Show too.
 
steingar said:
Got out Saturday with no fuss at all, a nice change from the giant conga line I've waited in previous years. I did pull the trigger on a air of Lightspeeds, glad I did. Got a couple hundred bucks off buying them at the Show too.
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We bought the Halo's for my wife. She loves them and they are a huge improvement over the avcoms.
 
Avi8or2012 said:
We bought the Halo's for my wife. She loves them and they are a huge improvement over the avcoms.
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Wish I could have, would have saved some coin. I can't, my ears are shaped weird and I can't wear the plugs comfortably. Mrs. Steingar hates having anything in her ears. So LIghtspeeds it is.
 
steingar said:
Wish I could have, would have saved some coin. I can't, my ears are shaped weird and I can't wear the plugs comfortably. Mrs. Steingar hates having anything in her ears. So LIghtspeeds it is.
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My wife is very sensitive to clamping pressure, as she gets headaches easily. She loves flying with me. So I had to do something. Lol
 
Grum.Man said:
The dang scooters, golf carts, vehicles, buses, tractors, bicycles are getting out of control.
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I agree. I understand the scooters, as those are a handicap issue. But the golf carts and vehicles seemed nonstop. I felt like we were about to get run over every few minutes.
 
Cluemeister said:
I agree. I understand the scooters, as those are a handicap issue. But the golf carts and vehicles seemed nonstop. I felt like we were about to get run over every few minutes.
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After the rain on Saturday golf carts, and cars/trucks were flying through the puddles soaking everyone trying to tiptoe around them. My issue with the scooters is all the young kids riding them around. Are there no limitations on renting them?
 
Cluemeister said:
I agree. I understand the scooters, as those are a handicap issue. But the golf carts and vehicles seemed nonstop. I felt like we were about to get run over every few minutes.
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Agree. I know there are always lots of carts and gators around but this year it seemed like every 30 seconds we were in someone else's way and about to get run over by them.
 
Juliet Hotel said:
Drones are awesome pieces of tech for what they are. I'm not really afraid of hitting one and I don't otherwise feel threatened by them, what's not to like?
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My impression of them last year was that they were not only glitchy, but they were boring as hell. The glitchiness was the only thing worth watching, at least from where I was. It seemed like maybe it was doing something cool if you were right at show center? I think they were maybe not ready for such a big show as Oshkosh, it probably would have been better if they were on the other side of the runway.

AGLyme said:
First, thank you to all the fine people on this site for answering my questions about flying to OSH, I am grateful. And I put your answers and advice to good use.
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Awesome! :)

Grum.Man said:
Probably the best turnout I have seen in the past 4 years even with the poor weather.
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I've never seen a turnout anywhere close to this. The grounds were dried up completely by Wednesday night, so things were back to normal, but on Thursday and Friday I was driving around a fair bit and saw:

1) Airplane parking was pretty much full except scattered spaces, even though the South 40 has expanded to being a stone's throw from Fisk Ave.
2) Fond du Lac had easily twice as many airplanes as I've ever seen there, probably even 3x - Fond du Lac was about the size of Sun 'n' Fun this year!
3) Camp Scholler was basically full, just scattered spots like in airplane parking, all the way to the frontage road at the highway and all the way to the southern tip of that area, PLUS there was a whole new area off Ripple Ave where they used to park exhibitors' semi trailers that was converted to camping this year, PLUS a bunch of RVs that were displaced earlier in the week were still in the shopping center parking lots to the north of the field.

I expected a little more given it being the 50th anniversary. Not sure what, maybe some special appearances or idk.. just didn't seem different than any other year.
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Whadda ya want, a nuke or something? :goofy: Oh wait, they had that. Twice. Kinda. And it was freaking awesome.

The dang scooters, golf carts, vehicles, buses, tractors, bicycles are getting out of control. They seriously need to cut back on that and they all drive like they have the right of way.
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They made some major changes about a decade ago to try to address that problem, such that even if you had a golf cart, you couldn't get through the main area of the show, you had to follow some new roads that went around the central area. Unfortunately, people started walking on the cart paths too and complaining about carts on the cart paths :rolleyes: and the carts couldn't get away from the people still... So they've relaxed those rules again it seems, since there are exhibitors along the cart paths now. But, they do need to make another attempt to address it, though it didn't seem too awful to me this year - Certainly not as bad as it was back then.

I noticed a lot more people are bringing their own carts to Camp Scholler and parking them in the "bike" lot near the Fly Market now, though... But those aren't inside the show.

Avi8or2012 said:
Did anyone else feel as though the fly-overs dragged on during the airshow for too long? I was listening one day to the air boss, and some of the performers were being rushed and seemed frustrated while the fly overs went on for a while. My wife and I love the mass fly overs, but it went on for a long time.
I agree with @Grum.Man . It seemed a bit lackluster for 50th. We had a blast, though.
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There were definitely big gaps in the middle of the airshows that I don't remember seeing before. It seemed like there were far fewer fly-overs, though, if you're talking about what I'm talking about: The giant formations (20++) of RVs or T-28s or T-6s or whatever. It seemed like there was always just one thing going on, and sometimes you had to wait for the next thing. Anyone know if there's a new air boss or something?
 
Walking out after the Wed night airshow I had to move over for 2 speeding golf carts full of kids coming up from behind. There was some security guy in an orange vest on a 2-wheeler of some sort in hot pursuit. I thought it was Paul Blart, but he wasn't on a Segway.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
I feel like every aerial demonstration at Osh is about 20% too long.
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I especially feel that way about the night airshow. On Saturday, I was literally falling asleep during what seemed like the 20th person doing chandelles with sparklers on their wings. I did appreciate some of the integration that they started doing between ground-based fireworks and aerial stuff. But... still. Probably three too many night performers.

I also noticed the gaps in performances were pretty big this year. It just didn't feel tight and well coordinated. Especially some of the night performances. For a multi-hour airshow, you really need to keep things tight to keep the crowd engaged and interested. Otherwise, if you start having multi-minute breaks between performances, people will drift into conversations and basically ignore what's happening in the air.
 
I thought the night show was great. Only thing I didn't really like were the jet Sonexes. Just didn't look like much.
 
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Yeah, and after they get sick of feeding the mosquitoes... time to leave.
 
I thought this was supposed to be a year to highlight aerial fire fighting. I haven't seen a single mention about demos or anything else regarding aerial fire fighting. Am I just missing those pics along the way or was there not much done about it?
 
CJones said:
I thought this was supposed to be a year to highlight aerial fire fighting. I haven't seen a single mention about demos or anything else regarding aerial fire fighting. Am I just missing those pics along the way or was there not much done about it?
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There was an aerial firefighting demo almost every day airshow. Pretty incredible stuff, actually. That CL-215 was a LOT of fun to watch. i was completely blown away after seeing it drop for the first time... and then blast off into a near 90 degree bank angle and bug out. Can't imagine what it feels like to throw a big airplane around like that.
 
Steve Costello said:
There was an aerial firefighting demo almost every day airshow. Pretty incredible stuff, actually. That CL-215 was a LOT of fun to watch. i was completely blown away after seeing it drop for the first time... and then blast off into a near 90 degree bank angle and bug out. Can't imagine what it feels like to throw a big airplane around like that.
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Ok.. It seems odd that I haven't seen ANY photos of that happening. I assumed the would do some sort of demo (and I'm bummed that I missed it).
 
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I didn’t get any pics of the fire bombers in action, but they did drop a lot of water. That C130 was impressive.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
I feel like every aerial demonstration at Osh is about 20% too long.
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The challenge for me is that I’ve seen all of those acts a dozen times or more and the only way I enjoy the air show itself is to find a shady viewing point away from the show line and announcers and drink a beer while talking with friends and casually watching the show. That’s so much better than being on the show line with the crowds, noise, annoying announcers, and the heat.
 
I was looking forward to seeing the BAe 146 tanker do some flying, but it actually got called to duty before they could do a demo
 
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