Like thousands of my closest friends, I made the pilgrimage to Oshkosh, Wis., in late July for the Experimental Aircraft Association’s annual AirVenture Fly-In and Convention. As has been the case with the show in recent years, the 2018 edition set another new record for attendance, with some 601,000 people moving through the gates. At Oshkosh’s Wittman Field, there were 19,588 aircraft operations during the 11-day period from July 20-30, according to EAA, an average of approximately 134 takeoffs/landings per hour. I contributed two of those operations.
Whoever coined the phrase “getting there is half the fun” may have had general aviation and personal airplanes in mind. But not all of my journey was fun, depending on your definition. My trip started in earnest two days before my planned departure, with a check of the 48-hour prognostic chart, reproduced below. It advertised typical summer thunderstorms along much of my route, especially in Florida, with a promise of a low-pressure system hovering over southern Wisconsin and central Michigan. My initial plan included trying to use that low to grab a tailwind into OSH from northern Indiana after a fuel stop in Kentucky. My plan almost worked.
