Oshkosh Diary - Sunday July 22

Most of Sunday, like most of my time so far, has been taken up with socializing, although I visited the homebuilt camping area and was startled by the number RVs that had filled it in the previous 24 hours.

The highlight was meeting Doug Reeves of Van's Air Force. I stole the picture above of him taking a picture of me taking a picture of him.

I took many more pictures and have added them to the slideshow, which you can find here. I'm also adding separate campsite shots of the BBQ festivities (of which they're none so far on the BBQ page at http://home.comcast.net/~bcollinsrv7a/eaa/.

I have more stories to write than time to write them. I met a couple from Tennessee (they're on the slideshow) with his-and-her RVs; not the only people who have his/her RVs (the Velvicks come to mind. Oh, memo to self: go meet the Velvicks), but I have a feeling there's a good story here. Reporters know these things.

Kelly Patterson of Phoenix had a valve problem and had to put down at an airport in Kansas, so he and his girlfriend are a scratch for this year. I had them down for some BBQ duty so we'll see.


At this point, I'm tempted to dump the BBQ ticket table at the "door" as there are now people coming out of the woodwork asking to come. So we may just throw open the "doors" (easily done since there are no doors) and put out a donation bin.

At the EAA briefing this morning (Monday), Dick Knapinski said a T-6 made an emergency landing on Highway 41 (that's the main north-south drag in these parts) last night in Fond du Lac. No injuries although there was leading-edge damage.

About a half-dozen helicopters were to arrive from France but about 3 of them had to turn back because of mechanical difficulty.

The RV formation folks arrived on Sunday, but were denied permission to fly in as a group (like the Bonanza folks). They will be performing their close-formation 35-ship roles everyday this week, I believe).

Had a very nice BBQ last night at Michael Sausen's house up near Appleton. Michael is building an RV-10.

I'm covering a Cirrus news conference for the day job this morning and will write a story (I presume on VLJs) later.