he other day, I received an email from a new owner who had just purchased his first airplane, a 1964 Cessna 172E. He planned to fly with his 9-year-old son to EAA AirVenture 2023 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. It would be their first voyage to the big fly-in, and he had several questions about the ins and outs of experiencing Oshkosh as a new airplane owner.
Presented with such a noble mission, I dropped the time-critical project I had been focusing on and neglected my responsibilities entirely in favor of helping him out by sharing some tips I’ve learned in my own first trips as a new owner. This adventure would likely create lifelong memories for father and son alike, and I wanted to make sure they were great ones. But rather than simply covering tie-downs, sleeping comfort, and personal electronic charging solutions as I did in the past, I focused on some of the less-obvious lessons I learned and observations I made more recently at last year’s AirVenture.
