Adam’s FS Design Blog

I suppose, unless you literally live under a rock or in a cave with no electricity, that you have heard of the EAA Air Venture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin that is held every August. Suffice to say, it’s one of, if not the largest general aviation fly-in in the world. I am not a pilot, but do have an interest in aviation and enjoy a good air show now and then so this year, a few of us from the office made the trip from Grand Rapids, Michigan, down and around Lake Michigan through Chicago, up through Millwaukee and on to Oshkosh last week.

We decided to go there and back in a single day. Think we’re crazy? Well, you might be right… We met at the Abacus office at 4:00 AM on a rainy Wednesday morning and piled into the large extra-comfortable van for the trip.

I got to bring my oldest daughter along for the trip too so for her, 4AM had rarely been seen before. Equipped with her Nintendo DS, her case full of Pokemon games for the DS, a stock of homemade Pokemon puzzles that I made for her and the CD/MP3 player, she piled into the van into back seat bench with dad. Thinking she’d be asleep in minutes, she busted out the puzzles and began filling them in and continued that until it was completed. She then turned to the DS while I (dad) was sleeping as best I could (that reminds me to ask about the shocks on that van…). I took over the CD/MP3 and continued my quest for sleep while she stayed awake against numerous warnings of how much walking she was going to have to do and how tired she would be.

After a quick breakfast and potty stop, we arrived at Oshkosh around 9:30 AM making the trip only about 5 hours, oh wait, we crossed a time-zone that dropped it an hour - so make that a 6 hour car ride. We all piled out and hiked up to the gates to get wristbands and make our way in.

I was carrying a shoulder bag with some software, business cards and water along with a company camera (Cannon Digital Rebel XT with a 18-55mm lens for you camera people). I also brought along our family point-and-shoot camera for my daughter to use. She immediately pulled it out and started snapping pictures of every plane she saw between the gates and the runway. I gave a mild warning about batteries saying something to the effect that I only have the one set and if they die, that’s it - you might want to conserve them for some of the other cool planes.

We all agreed to meet in the afternoon and went our separate ways. I hit the Microsoft booth in Hanger D and stopped by Hanger C to see an old friend and then made the way over to the Classics section and spoke with Waco Classic Aircraft Corporation.

Next we hit the home-built aircraft section. Armed with a mini-recorder and a questionnaire, I sought out some home-built aircraft owners to ask them a few questions about their investments and hobby.

The first interview was with Garth Hichens with his Glasair Sportsman 2+2. I placed the mini-recorder in the grass between us and hit record and started asking a few simple questions. The mini-recorder is good, but is older and records to a tape. That and the fact that it’s Oshkosh with planes taking off and loud speakers blaring all around made the audio a bit difficult to hear. With the help of an audio editor, I managed to clear it up some to get the details.

Currently Garth and his wife live in Annapolis, Maryland but Garth is originally from South Africa. He and his wife made the trip to Oshkosh in about 6.5 hours with a couple of stops along the way. Garth has been interested in aviation his whole life and has read many books on flying. He just started flying lessons only 5 years ago and now has his own plane. Feel free to listen to the whole interview with Garth.

My daughter and I continued to walk around seeking out a new victim interview. During our search, she suggested that she hold the recorder to get it closer to them while talking to help improve the quality. I was astounded that I hadn’t thought of it and took her up on her offer. The next few interviews were much better than the first, but we still had to battle wind, planes and the loud speakers.

The next interview was with Dale Carlson and his Zenith CH-801. Dale and his wife live in California, Missouri, which happens to be only a hour or so from the Zenith headquarters.

They made the flight up in less than 5 hours with one stop for fuel. Dale has always been interested in flying and was in the ROTC in college where he received his private pilot license. He then joined the Army and learned to fly helicopters. At one point in the interview, I asked Dale if he had considered building another aircraft in the future to which he replied something to the effect that he would like to but didn’t have any plans to at the moment.

The whole time he was pondering and answering the question, his wife was behind him shaking her head left and right answering silently for him. This is one case where the audio doesn’t do this interview justice - next time we’ll have to consider video-taping!  You can listen to the whole interview with Dale here.

We walked a bit more through the seemingly endless lines of home-built aircraft and found another owner willing to give us a few minutes.

Mike Reinath was standing next to his Lancair 360 while his wife sat in the shade of its fuselage. They flew into Oshkosh from San Jose, California in about 8.5 hours. Mike started flying model airplanes in high school and with the help of his parents, received his pilots license at the age of 18. Listen to the entire interview with Mike here!

After meeting up with the group, or one of them anyway, we had some lunch and headed over toward the Warbirds section, which was all the way past the huge home-built section. By now I could tell my young partner was starting to wind down a bit.

Along the way we heard a woman speaking in a tent near us so we wandered over and saw none other than Patty Wagstaff giving a talk in front of a group of people. We stuck our heads inside and listened to hear talk for a few minutes, snapped a few quick pics, then continued on our way over to the Warbirds.

We made it to the Warbirds and found out that getting an interview there was a bit more difficult. More people were around checking out the historic planes and aksing numerous questions of their own. We headed to the back where we saw someone wiping down their plane. That someone turned out to be our fourth and last interview of the day.

Malte Lorenz was the proud owner of a North American T-28 “Trojan”. Malte flew in from Long Island, New York in two 2-hour flights for a trip-time of just 4 hours (that has to be flying pretty fast!). Malte enjouted watching the seaplanes come in where he grew up and knew that was what he wanted to do. He went to college and then got his license and took a job flying seaplanes. Check out the entire interview with Malte here!

After that is was time to head back. After some merciless begging for ice cream, I caved in and we enjoyed a cone. It melted about as fast as you could imagine but it was a refreshing treat after a whole day of walking.

I was a bit confused on the meeting time being that we were an hour off and I didn’t have a watch. I asked for the time, but then didn’t know if the time I got was Central time or Eastern time!? So my daughter and I walked around the meeting place 5 or 6 times and then sat for a while and even headed out to the car to see if they had headed over there instead. We walked back into the show and decided to sit in a central location and watch the air show for a while thinking we’d be found. About 45 minutes later, we were found and headed home.

The ride home seemed much faster, probably because we were so tired and actually slept. We stopped in Chicago to eat with some family friends at a place called the Cats Meow. After a few hours rest, my daughter perked up for her second wind and proceeded to come out of her shell a bit more to join and start conversation with everyone at the table.

We got back in Grand Rapids at about 2 AM Thursday morning and everyone split off for home to catch some Z’s before coming into work the next day. I’ll admit I took some liberty and showed up a bit late.

So that’s it for this year and we’re already looking forward to next year!

Thanks to Arnie for bringing along my daughter, lunch and dinner. Thanks to my daughter for helping with the recording - you helped a lot! Thanks to Paul for the image of the Oshkosh gate.

Special thanks to Garth, Dale, Mike and Malte for their time and the interviews!

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