Oshkosh, by gosh

Karen and I took a little side trip North when passing through Wisconson, to investigate the EAA Air Venture Museum in Oshkosh, WI. It has been a dream of my Dad to go there someday and we thought it would be great to lay some groundwork for a possible trip to the annual fly-in next year.

Imagine a town of about 60,000 exploding into a population of over 500,000 for a week. A sleepy airport that gets suddenly inundated with 10,000 airplanes along with thousands of RV's and tents. I have no idea how many port-a-potties it would take to serve the needs of so many. It is one of the many things on my extensive "bucket list"!

Replica of SpaceShipOne, the 1st privately built and flown space ship.
It was the brainchild of Burt Rutan and flew into suborbital
space on Sept. 19, 2004 by Mike Melvill

North American F86 Sabre in foreground and
WWII North American B25 "Mitchell"

Replica of the 1903 Wright Flyer (lower) and I think
the upper is a replica of the Wright Glider

"Miss Champion", a Pitcairn PCA 2 Autogiro

Replica of Fokker Dr. 1 Triplane, the aircraft made famous
by Baron Manfred von Richthofen

Grumman J2F Duck, built in 1944

Replica of "Fat Boy," the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan
This mockup was used to assemble wire harnesses for the working bombs

A very real looking WAC standing next to a WWII
Army staff car

Karen and pilot getting ready for a trip around Oshkosh in a
1927 Swallow.

1930's vintage air traffic control tower microphone
used in the Cleveland, OH tower.

I'm getting a ride around the "patch" in a 1929 Travel Air

I took some video of the airplane rides and hope to have them posted on youtube shortly. Below is a link to the EAA AirVenture Museum. You can see these and many more aircraft and displays through the museum's website links.

http://www.airventuremuseum.org/default.asp

Let us know if you plan on attending the event next year...we might see you there!

It's Plane To Sea, for us

We had traveled some distance in Ohio when it dawned on me, while looking at the road atlas, the significance Ohio and the surrounding region had for me growing up. As many of you know, my family was in the logging business in Washington State. Many of the heavy equipment used in the logging and mining industries had brand names like Lima, Bucyrus Erie, Manitowoc, Marion and so forth. Just names, right? Not exactly...I discovered these were names of towns and cities in Ohio. I called my Dad and told him of my "discovery," and he filled in the blanks for me. I didn't know that the Ohio valley and surrounding areas were where these machines were made. And the steel mills...didn't know those were in Ohio, either. I thought that the country's only steel mills were located in Pennsylvania. Well, gee, what a "coinkydink" (coincidence)...that's just down the road from Ohio. Remember the song by Gordon Lightfoot..."The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald"? Well, as Paul Harvey would say: here's the rest of the story...the Edmund Fitzgerald, as with many similar ships, hauled the iron ore to the region for making steel at the mills. Of course, not only the heavy machinery was produced here in this region, but its always been the hub of the automobile industry. Sadly, like the logging and lumber mill industries, many of the production plants for the heavy equipment and automobiles have been closed or relocated also. 

 Here's a youtube link produced by josephhulton as a tribute to the Edmund Fitzgerald and its crew:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgI8bta-7aw

Now that I've bored you with 20th century information, I will head into the next blog.

Connie and Jim Priebe

We had left our friends, Herb and Karen Seil, then headed to Jim and Connie Priebe's. They own the sailboat "Plane to Sea" which we traveled on with them to St. Maarten last Christmas. Jim has been in aviation for all of his life, flying and restoring aircraft. He and Connie were in the final stages of refurbishing a Cessna 172 at their home when we arrived. Yep, at home...in the new shop designed for such fun...in their backyard. The only thing missing is the runway. But wait, what about using the county road that passes in front of their home? It has a long straight-stretch...with very few obstructions...They sure thought of great idea, in our opinion. We concurred, since in Montana, roads are used as runways all of the time (reasonably and prudently, of course). Jim and Connie had put a lot of thought into the concept and made the plans for it, so we thought it was pretty neat we were able to share in the fun.

Back and Forth...

Foot by Foot

Around trees and fence posts

We made it to the end of the driveway

Once on the road, it's hard to believe how long
the wingspan is

Up, Up and Away

Ummm...no Mr. Sheriff, sir. Don't know anything
about a plane using the road as a runway...
No...I think he was just making a low pass...

He didn't believe us, and once he figured out who was really in charge of the
people still left on the ground, he headed to the driveway to ask questions of Connie and where the plane exactly came from. She took the high road and explained they needed to get the plane airborne and over to the local airport...you can't just tear it apart and haul it on a trailer. So the sheriff headed to the local airport to question Jim and his sanity.

We headed over there ourselves, meeting up with Jim and the sheriff having a jovial conversation. The sheriff suggested that a phone call, next time, would smooth all future ruffled feathers.

Our time with Jim and Connie was so fun and we look forward to seeing them back down in the islands. Incidently, you may have noticed that Connie and I weren't in most of the pics...we were supervising the workers!