For aviation buffs, there's nothing quite like Oshkosh. EAA Airventure in Oshkosh, Wisconsin is an enormous aviation convention held annually at the Experimental Aircraft Association headquarters. Every aviation company you can think of sets up a booth, and literally thousands of airplanes fly into Wittman Regional Airport for the festivities.

In 2017, Wittman airport saw over 17,000 aircraft movements during the week of the convention.

My dad and I have always wanted to go, and since I didn't have anything else going on this summer, we scheduled a 3-day visit to the fun. My future employer, Garmin, is also one of the biggest sponsors of the event, which gave me an opportunity to play with all of their toys.

Though I had wanted to go for the full week, my travel companion thought that 3 days at the world's biggest aviation celebration was enough (spoiler alert, I'm gonna have to go back).

Getting To Wisconsin

We left Washington on Tuesday, boarding a flight to Milwaukee. About an hour before our arrival however, we were informed that Milwaukee's long runway was closed because of damage it recently sustained. After a brief holding circle over Wisconsin corn fields, we were informed that we'd be landing at Chicago instead. After landing we taxied for what felt like an hour, then parked at an international gate. Unfortunately the gate was not owned by Alaska, and since it was at the international terminal they couldn't let us off the plane.

We ended up sitting on the ground while we got more fuel, and the crew arranged some route between Chicago and Milwaukee, which was not in the dispatcher's database. By the time that was done the crew was going to bump into their max duty time, so they had to find a new crew that would take us back to Milwaukee (and continue on to Seattle). By the time the new crew made it we had burned even more fuel (I guess we weren't connected to ground power), requiring us to fuel up once again. We finally departed after 9pm and made it into Milwaukee shortly after. It felt very good to get off that plane.

Day 1 - Wednesday

Since we hadn't made it to our AirBnb in Green Bay until 1am, we got a late start to our first day. After waking up and finding breakfast, we had to drive an hour south to Oshkosh. We then had to find parking, check in and get our wristbands, then take a shuttle to the main grounds. We repeated this long process every day. We decided to stay closer to the grounds next year.

Nonetheless it was well worth the journey. The booths alone are incredible. Every aviation company you can imagine was there (and some non-aviation companies, like Ford?).

It's easy to see how you could leave broke. I spent a long time playing with Garmin's new touchscreen stuff (which is made in Salem!):

Boeing Plaza had a C5 Galaxy as its centerpiece. The C5 was from Travis Air Force Base as well, which is where my girlfriend's father was based.

Try to count the number of Vans RV's. I dare you.

We didn't have much time to explore though, as the airshow started in the early afternoon. We even got an impromptu display by the Blue Angels, who were not scheduled to be there.

Like a million parachuters:

Vicky Benzing:

What was neat, although somewhat concerning, was the massive cold front that passed over during the middle of the show. Though we had beautiful blues skies at the start of the show, it slowly gave way to gray clouds.

Everyday they also did an F16 demonstration and a Airforce heritage flight to end the show.

After the show was a stream of departure and arrivals, during the brief window between the afternoon airshow and the night show.

UPS MD-11 has to go back to work:

We spent the time walking in the rows and rows of warbirds. It's difficult to describe the immense scale of Oshkosh. There are multiple acres of fields just devoted to T6's:

The night airshow had just begun when we started to see lightning in the distance. The cold front that had passed this afternoon had brought a line of thunderstorms behind it. They continued with the first act of the airshow, but shortly after made the announced that they were canceling the rest of the performances. Also, they told us to take immediate shelter a there was a storm cell barreling towards us. This was going to be more of an adventure than we thought.

On our way back I snapped some erie pictures of the C5 under a thundery sky.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment of the whole trip was the departure of the B-1 right after the airshow was canceled. While were walking back to our cars (getting soaked in the process), the B-1, which was scheduled to depart as part of the performance, took off with full afterburners unannounced. Unfortunately we were too far from the runway to get any good takeoff pictures. This was all I could manage:

Day 2 - Thursday

Thursday started in much the same way, with breakfast in Green Bay then a long drive to Oshkosh.

The airshow was even cooler, and featured a massive RV formation, and a C-17 demo.

They did some schedule shuffling as well, and were able to reschedule the night airshow. This conflicted with the twilight flight fest, which was already scheduled for Thursday night. This includes a short-takeoff and landing competition that usually takes place on the ultralight runway. Instead, they moved the STOL competition to the 8000' runway (which made it a little less impressive).

Here Mike Patey's much-hyped Draco:

Nonetheless it was fun to watch. The night airshow was a real treat though.

Day 3 - Friday

Day three started in the much the same way, and we even had time to walk all the way down to the Ultralight section before the airshow that afternoon.

It was cool to Draco up close, and even stopped by Trent Palmer's Freedom Fox as well.

As we ate lunch we witnessed two F-22 Raptor's arrive:

For Friday's airshow we decided to park at the southern end of the field where there we much smaller crowds. This turned out to be a good idea, and got some great unobstructed shots.

This was also the only day where we the B-29 Doc flew.