July 22-29, 2023, AirVenture 2023

I was back at AirVenture for the third time in a row.  This time was considerably different from my usual routine, however.  Instead of camping by the plane, I stayed in a rented house with my friends from Essex Skypark.  The house was close to Fond du Lac airport so we kept our planes -- all RVs -- there instead of Wittman Field at AirVenture.  I enjoyed doing something a little different this year.

Two Essex RVs -- Mark and Brian -- flew out on Friday, and three more -- Chuck, Ron and I -- flew out on Saturday.  Rich and Nhu-An also departed Saturday in their 172.  We flew back a week later, leaving Saturday.

There were pros and cons with staying in the house at Fond du Lac.  The main pro was the social aspect, of course.  Another big pro was by virtue of having the car we had access to restaurants and as a result we ate much better than you can do with camping.  Fond du Lac has lots of good places to eat.  One con was that the house was more expensive than camping.  Another was that we didn't have as much time at the show because of travel times, and delays in getting six adults out the door in the morning.  That said, having five full days at the show was more than enough time to see everything.

We did not get rained on the entire week.  But it was hot most of the week which affected how much you wanted to walk, or how much time you wanted to sit on in the sun watching the airshow.

It seemed to me the show was packed to the rafters.  I predicted it would exceed last year's record and it did:  approximately 677,000, up from the previous record of 650,000 last year.  More than 10,000 aircraft arrived at Wittman Regional Airport in Oshkosh and other airports in east-central Wisconsin. At Wittman alone, there were 21,883 aircraft operations in the 11-day period from July 20-30, which is an average of approximately 148 takeoffs/landings per hour when the airport is open.    3,365 showplanes were on hand including a record 1,497 registered in vintage aircraft parking, plus 1,067 homebuilt aircraft, 380 warbirds, 194 ultralights, 134 seaplanes and amphibians, 52 aerobatic aircraft, and 41 rotorcraft.   There were more than 13,000 camping sites in aircraft and drive-in camping accounting for an estimated 40,000 visitors.  More than 5,500 volunteers contributed in excess of 250,000 hours.