Photography by Russell Munson
Click here to see more photos
All types of aircraft that fly, and the people who fly them, gathered in Wisconsin for the world's greatest aviation event.
For most of the year, it's just a field. Oh, a few airplanes come and go, and a few visitors stop and visit. But for 51 weeks a year, the grass fields surrounding the Oshkosh runways are filled only with memories and expectations-place holders for the people, laughter, life and dreams that, come the last week in July, will materialize out of the haze again like the fabled town of Brigadoon for the brief but boisterous EAA party known as AirVenture.
It is, perhaps, the only gathering where every possible kind of aviation, from the lowest-tech Trike to the highest-tech jet, is welcomed with open arms, like a great big old block party open to any and all casseroles and guests. What's required for entry here, aside from a tolerance for weather, crowds, and non-flush toilets, is simply a passion for living and a willingness to feel young again.
Each year brings different aircraft, developments, and surprises, but Oshkosh is always a place where fantasies run wild and dreams become real. There are so many kinds of eye candy and fantasy dream vehicles overflowing the exhibit halls and display tents, in fact, that the imagination and eyes glaze over after a few sensory-overloaded days. But fantasies sometimes give birth to dreams. And if AirVenture seems a never-ending celebration of childhood, perhaps it's because it offers such joyous, loud and colorful confirmation that anything is possible and that fantasy-dreams really can come true.
At the 1992 show, for example, a few forward-looking entrepreneurs and a NASA engineer named Bruce Holmes began advocating for computerized, glass cockpit displays in small, GA aircraft. At the time, the idea seemed a little far-fetched. But this year, that dream became not just a reality, but the standard for almost every kind of new aircraft being sold. At the same time, the new Sport Pilot certification and Light Sport Aircraft categories took flight, opening the door to simpler airplanes and simpler flying opportunities. Two Australians who dreamed of building a mid-sized, piston utility plane saw their GA-8 Airvan granted FAA certification. Diamond Aircraft Industries introduced a new twin-engine diesel design. Mike Melvill, pilot of Burt Rutan's Ansari X-Prize candidate SpaceShipOne, was honored as the first non-military, non-governmental pilot to win astronaut's wings.
All of those accomplishments were once simply the dreams of men and women who scribbled on notepads and bar napkins in late-night sessions and then poured their time, money, sweat and tears into uncertain ventures in the hopes of turning those imagined ideas into something more tangible.
But AirVenture isn't just about commercial ventures. It also celebrates all the quiet dreams that drive individual pilots to design, build, restore, and fly the vast array of colorful and beloved airplanes that adorn the fields and flight line each year. The planes themselves are beautiful, of course. But it's the stories behind them that contain the real magic.
A retired aeronautical engineer finally got his 1918 Curtiss JN-4H "Jenny" to Oshkosh this year after a 31-year restoration effort. A father and son arrived in a Cessna 152 that the son learned to fly so that the father, whose poor vision had kept him from being a pilot, could finally know the sky. A talented 15-year-old traded his painting of a pilot's plane for a ride in it to Oshkosh-and then spent the show sketching planes along the flight line to help pay for flying lessons. Two 17-year olds, the ink still wet on their private tickets, brought their Luscombes from Colorado, giving Young Eagle rides all along the way in the hopes of getting more young people interested in aviation.
Talk to the people who sit so proudly beside their new or battered sets of wings and you find parents who've brought children, children who've brought parents, couples, lovers, families and friends. And for almost all of them, flying here was both a realization of some kind of dream and a celebration of all the things in life-laughter, adventure, friends, families, dreams, beauty, wonder and flight-that give the journey its meaning and joy.
For most of the year, the fields of Oshkosh may sport only grass and clover. But their enduring magic lies in the fact that for one jubilant week every year, they become something far more than that. They become a place where the dreams of yesterday come true, the dreams of tomorrow are born and, somewhere in the middle, all of us suddenly remember again just how much fun this thing called flying can be. -By Lane Wallace
