Yes, while the girls played we enjoyed the Experimental Aircraft Association's annual show. The
EAA AirVenture Oshkosh is the largest annual convention of any kind, any where in the world. It is a gathering of aviation enthusiasts and is held each summer at Wittman Regional Airport in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. It is sponsored by the Experimental Aircraft Association, an international organization based in Oshkosh. During the gathering, the airport's control tower is the busiest in the world. Additional air traffic controllers are called in to assist throughout the week from all over the country. The show lasts a week, however we were only able to attend for 3 days, but what a full 3 days!! There are several dealers sharing their newest small craft for all to see and dream, while only a few can actually buy! Since my partner is a pilot of small aircraft, we were drooling!! If only we could win the lottery :) There were classes you could take that involved every possible topic in airplane craft, and booths filled with potential purchases from toys to hats, to plane memorabilia, to plane parts! Some of the booths were set up as small museums ... like this replica WWII English air base....
and this American one....
Many fliers bring their tents and set up camp right next to their parked air plane!
A few samples of what you could buy:
The one below is called an Auto Gyro, we saw it in flight and close up on the ground.
The history of military aviation was also well represented. We have some amazing people in this big beautiful country of ours who have taken it upon themselves to save and preserve the historic aircraft from our history: we also saw a few aircraft from Great Britain, Germany, Russia and other countries.
Corsair - fold up wings (gull wings) for better storage on an aircraft carrier.
B26 - lives in a hanger at the Georgetown Texas airport
Remember how Pilot's name their planes? Here is Betty's Dream!
This one has a double name!
P51 Mustang - Cadillac of the Sky
B52 - so big I could not get it all in one camera frame!
I bet "The Ace" flies this one!
Then there was the afternoon air show with ... well... I let you decide:
We have a brand new Good Year Blimp!
This new one can even take a bow!
The Honda Aeroshell Acrobatic team!
A Bi-plane acrobatic flier:
A pilot who decided to land his plane on a moving truck!!
We enjoyed a performance by a sky diving team.
Then they brought out the 'big girl' planes! The jets!!
They are loud, powerful and fast! What's not to love????
And it gets better ... the Phantom, the Harrier and the F22 Raptor !!!!!
Watch the Harrier as it lands right in front of us. It was really loud but to see it land softly on the ground was really cool :)
My all time favorite, the F-22 Raptor and its pilot who was pretty darn cute!
My favorite .... the Raptor tearing a hole in the sky!!! He flies so fast it near impossible for this amateur photographer to get shots of him!!
The Raptor is so versatile it can slow down to keep pace with smaller aircraft, even propeller craft.
And as the sun set for the evening the show came to an end. Golden light on amazing jets, fireworks lit up the flight paths with wild color, the lone sky diver carrying the American Flag and the Good Year Blimp heading home in the sunset :)
What an amazing time!
I hope you all enjoyed this as much as we did ... more soon!
I hope you all enjoyed this as much as we did ... more soon!
4 comments:
Amazing pictures!Feel like I was there!
For an amateur, your photography appears to be the work of a professional, Jan. That's no surprise... You excel in everything you set out to do. Thanks for sharing, and please give those pups a hug for us.
Thanks for sharing! I loved all of the pictures.
You took some great pictures of that event, thanks for sharing. Even a rail buff like myself finds airshows like that very interesting and I even recognized some of the aircraft before I read your captions. Neat stuff.
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