July 29, 2004 - Flying to AirVenture 2004
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One of my life goals has been to fly my own plane into EAA's AirVenture
fly-in, held annually in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. I had dreamt about it while
Bruce and I alternately sweated and froze during the two and a half years
of restoring the Citabria. We tried to do it last year, but the weather
gods said no. This year I was determined to make it.
After cancelling for bad weather on Tuesday and Wednesday, the forecast
for Thursday looked good. I got up early and called weather. They were
forecasting fog over the entire Eastern U.S. until 11AM. I decided to
go to the airport and give it a try anyway. If there was fog, I'd just
wait it out. I took off right at 6AM. West of Baltimore I ran into the
streaks of ground fog below but it wasn't a factor. Then the ground fog
disappeared once I got past Frederick. I thought I was home free.
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Then, two ridges out of Martinsburg, West Virginia, I
ran into nothing but fog on west of the ridge. Flying a strictly VFR bird,
I had no choice but to turn back and land at Martinsburg to wait it out.
Turned out Martinsburg had a restaurant, so I had a nice breakfast, and
when I was done, the weather briefer said the fog was breaking up. I took
off and sure enough, the fog was breaking up.
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| The Ohio River. A couple of months
ago I tried flying to Chicago but had to turn back here due to weather.
Not this time! As you can see, the fog is all gone and the weather is really
nice. It's gonna be a great flying day. |
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| Some nice puffy cumulous clouds right
beneath me. It's cloud-surfing time! Too bad Maggie isn't with me; she has
always wanted to fly through a cloud. |
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| Marion Airport in Ohio. I filled
up the Citabria and was pleasantly surprised that avgas was only $2.30 a
gallon. I tell you, western Ohio is great flying country. It's flat and
open. You could land anywhere. |
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| Lynnette's friend Jayne's house in
Decateur, Indiana. |
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| On the ramp at Porter County airport
in Valpareso, Indiana, just southeast of Chicago. The other plane is a little
faster than the Citabria. |
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| Chicago dead ahead. |
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| What's left of Meigs field. Sad.
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| This picture doesn't do the view
justice; Chicago is a nice looking town. |
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| The main highway heading North out
of Chicago. The three times I've been to AirVenture I had to drive this
road. Not this time! |
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The last 40 miles were the worst, weather-wise. I actually got rained
on a little as I flew in to Fond Du Lac airport. I couldn't land at Oshkosh
airport because the airshow was in progress. I later flew into Oshkosh
on Sunday.
Bruce picked me up at Fond Du Lac in the rental car and we drove to AirVenture.
Here is our campsite at Camp Scholler. That's Bruce with the rental car.
My tent is the camouflaged one. We're ready to hit it hard tomorrow!
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