Oshkosh 2012

I just returned from Oshkosh AirVenture in the Cirrus yesterday.  Had a great time working the booth for ForeFlight and meeting hundreds of folks.  I had the privilege of giving 4 talks throughout the week about using the iPad for flying and was hopefully able to share a few new tips in the process.

My wife and I flew up on Saturday (2 days before the show) to give us time to wait out any WX that may have cropped up.  Last year we ended up making a few short stops trying to get around the back side of a storm.

This year there was a storm just west of KFLD, our final destination, but it was moving so slowly that even though it took 5 hours to get up there we easily made it into the airport.  Here's what we saw using Stratus and ForeFlight Mobile 4.6 as we were under Chicago ATC control on our way north.


As usual, Fond Du Lac was low-key when we arrived.  That's something I can truly appreciate with how much other stuff is involved with exhibiting at a show as big as AirVenture.

Highlights of the trip included a short helicopter ride in a friend's R-44.  We stayed around 300' AGL and I even got to take the controls for a brief bit.  It was incredible - the view was intoxicating - and probably dangerous to my pocket book someday, as it really really made me want to get one.  :)



Saturday night we came back to the airport for the night air show.  We went to the flight line and watched the AeroShell team (who I got to fly with last year) do their thing as the sun set.  Then came a few more acts that made terrific use of pyrotechnics while performing loops and rolls over the runway.  After that was a very high quality fireworks show set to music, which makes anything better.  At the end a jet car came by blasting out jet fuel so forcefully that I felt like I might get pushed back by it.  It then sped down the runway to ignite a huge wall of fire some 500' long in the middle of the runway.  You could feel the heat from thousands of feet away.

My flight home was about as good as it gets.  I had the iPhone sending excellent music into my Zulu 2 headset, ATC on the radio helping me out, a 11,000' perch to watch the world go by, and a slight tailwind that let me get all the way home in one hop.

To top it off my 2 and 5 year old boys gave me the best greeting I've ever received when I walked in the door at home.  I had to pinch myself.  :)


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