Friday, August 1 My tennis shoes were still wet from the downpour the day before, so I tied them to my back pack and wore my Chacos. Tracey dropped Berck and me off at the museum, and we fully explored that before catching a bus back to the event area. The show was the best yet, which the Jelly Belly plane interrupting an aerobatic routine with his aileron falling off. The Thunderbirds were the last to perform. I’d never seen them perform except at the USAFA stadium at graduation. It rained on and off, so we were glad to have…
Thursday, August 1 Berck and I slept in and took the bus by ourselves in time to try to catch the other scheduled RV composite building class, but it was canceled too. Instead we went to the What’s New at Van’s class, where Van himself spoke. They didn’t talk very much about the RV-10, but it was nice to hear them talk about how they try to design planes for real people in the real world. We decided to find a good spot to watch the air show early and found one right on the spectator line. Unfortunately, a thunderstorm…
Wednesday, July 30 Randy, Berck, and I took the bus in the morning in time to get to the RV composite building class, but unfortunately the class was cancelled. We took a regular composite class, but didn’t stay for the hands-on part. Berck took a TIG welding class and wanted me to attend it with him. It was really interesting, but I fell sound asleep in my metal folding chair. Berck and I explored the exhibit booth hangers. Berck found the instrument panel we want for the plane. We also bought a cool tool for making hose clamps out…
Tuesday, July 29 In the morning we all loaded up in the car and drove to a lot that had a sign next to it that said EAA BUS. A bus came up that said “EMPLOYEES/VOLUNTEERS”. We asked the driver if there was another bus we should wait for, but she said we could ride her bus. When we asked what bus we should take, she went on and on about how everyone was trying to save a buck and she’d take people as long as she wasn’t full of volunteers. (It was only when we came back home, we…
Monday, July 28 We got up early to find nice cool temperatures and a steady wind, and Danny dropped of us back at Schaumburg airport. Even so, we didn’t have the plane filled up with fuel completely. We took off with no problem and headed north, keeping Lake Michigan off to the distance to our right. As we got closer to Oshkosh, we checked once more on the iPad and saw a whole lot of plane transponders converging. We had to turn our transponder off before we got too close. We kept our eyes open for traffic. I called…