July 22-29, 2023 - AirVenture 2023
Transit To Fond Du Lac
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Saturday morning, 8 AM, July 22, 2023. Our RVs are ready. Where are we going? To the show! The aviation mecca. The Disneyland of aviation. AirVenture 2023. Yes, we're going to Oshkosh.
This year Essex Skypark has five RVs going to the show. Mark and Brian in their RV-8s left yesterday morning. Today, Chuck and I in our RV-7s and Ron in his RV-12.
En-route weather looks excellent. We are go!
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Our path to Fond du Lac.
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Entering the Appalachians which is mostly a series of ridges that run northeast to southwest.
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| Flying over a pretty scattered layer. Winds were light. We made decent speed -- about 170 mph -- not bad for heading west. |
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On final for runway 25 at Carroll County-Tolson Airport (KTSO) in eastern Ohio. We like to stop here because of its excellent on-field restaurant.
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| There's the restaurant building on the other side of the fence. They have a decent avgas price as well. |
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| Rich and Nhu-An took off earlier than us in their 172 and arrived to Tolson shortly after us. Ron flew in as well and all three were able to join us for breakfast. |
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| Check out all those homemade pies available on the far right! |
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| Enjoying a hearty breakfast at the Carroll County Airport Restaurant. Alas, we did not have room left for pie. |
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Our birds parked on the ramp.
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| Tolson was as busy as I've ever seen it. I'm guessing some were going to Oshkosh. Others were just flying on this beautiful flying weather day. There's always an excitement in the air on the weekend before AirVenture with airplanes and pilots converging on Oshkosh. Ron's RV-12 is on the left. |
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A nice-looking Thatcher CX4 pulled up to the gas pumps. A little single-seat, low-wing, it's about as inexpensive and simple to build as you can get. You build it from plans. You don't hear about them much anymore. I rarely see one. But I looked at their webpage and see they now have two-seater models: tandem and side-by-side. |
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| Rich and Nhu-An took off first. Chuck and I soon caught up with them. |
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| We flew with them for about a minute, then pulled away. Got to get to the show! |
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| We ran into a stretch of big, cumulous clouds. |
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We were able to pick our way through for awhile.
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| Looking down at one of my favorite cross-country stops -- Port Bucyrus/Crawford County Airport (17G). Regretfully, we did not have a reason to stop this trip. |
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Passing by Warsaw Municipal Airport (KASW) in Indiana. Bruce and I landed here in the Citabria back in 2006 on our way back from Denver. I remembered it because of the unusual runway layout.
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| Passing to the north of Porter County Regional Airport (KVPZ) in Valparaiso, Indiana. I have stopped here many times on the way to Oshkosh, including last year. Thanks to the light winds, we were good on fuel and did not need to top off this year. |
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| Passing by a huge industrial facility on the shores of Lake Michigan. |
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| Now following the Lake Michigan shore to Chicago. |
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Looking at what is left of old Meigs Field.
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Lots of sailboats out on the lake today.
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| Downtown Chitown. |
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| We were down fairly low to stay under the O'Hare Class B. An airliner comes in overhead. |
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| What is this, the Bahamas? |
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Passing by Hartford Municipal Airport, about 25 miles south of Fond du Lac. The avgas prices are pretty good here but we didn't need fuel so we kept going. Looks like they are having some sort of fly-in down there.
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Safe on deck at Fond du Lac which along with Appleton is a "reliever" airport for Wittman Field at Oshkosh. Fond du Lac has a temporary tower during AirVenture week. One of the advantages of going into Fond du Lac is skipping the "Conga Line" trying to land at Wittman Field, which even this Saturday afternoon was lengthy. That said, the Fond du Lac tower was busy when we came in as a flight of two, although nothing more than you might encounter at any towered airport. We followed in another RV and made a formation landing on the very wide runway.
When we exited our airplanes, we could see dark clouds to the west. A big rainstorm was coming in. By the time we had our planes unloaded, tied down and canopy covers on, big raindrops were just starting to fall. We just made it. Mark and Brian were waiting for us in the rental car and we were soon on our way to our rental house.
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Mark's RV-8 in the foreground with our two birds at center.
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Later in the day, after the rainstorm had passed, Ron arrived in his RV-12.
It only cost $35 to park your plane at Fond du Lac for a week. Not bad at all. We had a rental car and house, but you could camp by your airplane at Fond du Lac if you wanted, and there was shuttle transportation between Fond du Lac and Wittman Field for the week for a nominal price.
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A big, beautiful Waco tied down next to Ron.
This Saturday, there didn't seem to be too many planes parked at Fond du Lac. But later in the week, there were quite a few planes parked here, on both sides of the north-south runway.
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Flashback! Chuck and Chip flying to Oshkosh last year. Chip was sick all day; it was a miserable day for him.
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