Good evening,
I'm considering flying to EAA Airventure this year (first time) and camping under the airplane for a couple nights.
For those that have done this before - would you recommend it? How are the facilities? My wife would be coming, and she's more of a nice resort type of person... I'm hoping the showers and things like that are decent and clean?
Thanks!
If you are flying a non-homebuilt, non-vintage aircraft, you will most likely be camping in the North 40. This is where we have camped for many years (even though we now have a homebuilt -- we can't leave our peeps!), and it's a little piece of heaven.
Picture a few thousand planes, parked wingtip to wingtip. Stand on your wing, and look at them stretch to the horizon, as far as you can see. That kind of heaven!
Conditions are fairly crude. You can't have a fire, for example. Still, with the North 40 ringed with bars and restaurants, and with dozens of food vendors on the field (including one in the North 40, the last few years), you don't have to cook anything if you don't want to.
The showers are clean and plentiful, especially for women, who are outnumbered by men 10 to 1. It's still campground showers, though, so tell your wife to get used to it.
We will be there all week, doing our usual Wednesday night party and having beers and hangar flying most of the week. The best part of the North 40 is to get there after the air show, just as the field reopens, pull your lawn chair up to Rwy 27, and watch arrivals and departures.
That's the REAL airshow, and we usually have peanuts (really!) and beers while we rate landings and marvel at the cha-cha line of planes.
Dress appropriately for Wisconsin, which means shorts, sandals, and winter parkas.
The weather can flip back and forth multiple times during the week, so be ready.
Don't expect to see the whole show in two days. We stay the whole week, and usually miss something.
This will be our 33rd consecutive Oshkosh fly-in, with luck. You will love it!
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