We amateur economists -- and these days, what economists aren't amateurs? -- have been figuring we'd use AirVenture as one of the barometers of house the economy is affecting people. After all, aviation isn't an essential and finding one's way to the middle of Wisconsin is an optional way to spend a week.
As evidenced -- sort of -- by the picture above, the early indication is more people will be at AirVenture this year than last year. Usually the field around where I set up camp each year doesn't fill up at my neck of the field until Sunday afternoon. But by Saturday afternoon this year,the tide of humanity has reached me.
Now this, of course, is all anecdotal. It could very well be that the people with pop-ups and tents this year, used to be the people with the big "land yachts" down closer to the show in previous years.
We'll see.
This morning I'm going to meet up with the guys from Trio Avionics to help set up their booth. It's going to be cool this week, especially for the people from the southwest who've been living with 100+ temperatures. Dry heat, schmy heat; that's no way to live.
Welcome back to Wisconsin, fellas!
BROWSING
I strolled along the homebuilt camping area for RVers a little bit ago (9:27 a.m.). I'll upload some pictures later but I loved the plugs I found above.
And here is the obligatory and cliche self portrait. I am not above cliche.
RUDDER TRIM
Here's an interesting modification. A rudder trim tab.
This is the RV-6 of Roger Hansen of Henderson, NV. This may be a common thing on a 6; I don't know. But it's cool.
Of course you can always find the builders strolling the RV corral. They're the ones taking pictures VERY close up.
I've been looking at fiberglass work of the elevator tips as I go from RV to RV. As you may know, that's what I've been doing. For the first time in 10 years of coming to Oshkosh, today was the first time I've ever said to myself "I like my work better" when I looked at some planes. It's not that the ones I looked at were poor; far from it. I just like the amount of work and payoff I got in the last two weeks working on my plane.
WIND
This one incident today involves a Pietenpol.
Completely second-hand info follows: A couple of Pietenpol Air Campers were landing and one caught a gust of wind and went vertical, settling back on the tail. I understand the pilot is OK. I suppose if you're going to break your airplane, Oshkosh is a good place to do it. There are more than few folks around who know what to do.
THE FORMATION
The 36-ship formation of RV airplanes flew over with a roar at 1:01 p.m. As usually, very impressive.
TODAY'S RANDOM IMAGES
Updated 8:01 p.m. - I've added a few more pictures. Apologies if this stuff isn't all that great. I'm taking things a lot slower -- so far -- this year.
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