![The author shares an aerial photo from arrival to a previous AirVenture at Oshkosh, Wisconsin. [Courtesy: Martha Lunken]](https://flyingmag1.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/FLY1025_3.3-Unusual-Attitudes-1.jpeg?width=962&height=721)
It’s been a volatile love affair beginning in 1968 when “Oshkosh” still happened at Rockford, Illinois.
Ebby let us use one of his Midwest Airways DC-3s with friend and Proctor & Gamble pilot Will Adams up front. Early in the morning, with a full load of local pilots fortified with a bunch of sweet rolls and coffee, we arrived about 10 a.m. I was overawed with everything, especially watching for the first time Bob Hoover fly that piston Aero Commander, disappearing into low clouds at the top of his vertical maneuvers.
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Later, those clouds morphed into a genuine thunderstorm with wind and heavy rain. Thanks to my sister Mary, a former Lake Central Airlines flight attendant, for running to the DC-3 and buttoning up the cockpit windows. When the weather cleared, we all got home—sunburned, tired and happy.
Things were a lot different when the spectacle of AirVenture moved to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and I was an FAA inspector and safety program person in the Cincinnati Flight Standards District Office—probably around 1994. I’d been assigned to work at the FAA booth in a non-air-conditioned tent with temperatures hovering around 100 degrees. I was also scheduled to deliver a program on the “new ‘A-B-C-D-E-G’ airspace” structure one evening.
Mary had driven with me from Cincinnati in a ridiculous little car I’d bought—a Subaru Justy. The bright side was we had a nice motel room and friends, Dennis and Cynthia Wolter, whose Air Mod is a premier airplane interior designer. They had—and still do—a booth at the show and plenty of room in their van to carry our overflow.
My airspace program seemed to be well received by everybody in the audience except a guy in the back who I would learn was an FAA type from Washington—one of the geniuses who designed the program. I told the pilot audience not to get their panties all wadded up about understanding this new “wedding cake” structure since hardly anybody understood the old one. In time, it would begin to make some sense.
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Why wasn’t I surprised when my remarks generated an infuriated report to my manager from the Washington guy?
In those years, FLYING had a pavilion at Oshkosh— a wonderful modular building with a buffet, places to relax in air-conditioning and real flushing toilets. You had to be invited or in some way be special to have access, but advertisers and contributors were welcome. I usually squirreled my way in, either as a guest of an advertiser, like my friends at Hartzell Propeller, and then as a columnist.
In fact, for a couple of years after retirement, I made the trip in a Hartzell TBM thanks to my friend Jim Brown, who bought the company in the late 1980s. Brown was a splendid guy who literally saved that propeller company. He and I co-owned a Cub, and Jim encouraged me to fly his SN-J. What a dear friend and how I miss him.
![The author shares an aerial photo from arrival to a previous AirVenture at Oshkosh, Wisconsin. [Courtesy: Martha Lunken]](https://flyingmag1.b-cdn.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/FLY1025_3.3-Unusual-Attitudes-2.jpeg?width=630&height=383)
I saw how the other half lived and, as a half-baked celebrity, enjoyed all the perks of important people at the show. I stayed in a rented house nearby, and another year had an extra motel room. Of course, there were other important-people perks, such as private AC areas, a golf cart for transportation, being introduced to celebrities, and watching the airshow from special seats. It was great…sort of. I was surprised and a little embarrassed at what status and money could buy at the show.
One year (maybe the most fun), I joined a group of four guys I knew well, driving to the show in my friend Bobby Strunk’s RV. Good thing we were longtime close friends, because Bobby and I had to share a double bed.
For several years, I flew my 180 into Oshkosh, and I must confess I never really felt safe about the arrival procedure. Pilots of every skill level who allegedly were well briefed on the arrival NOTAM flew wildly different kinds of airplanes. Maybe impatience or fuel concerns made anybody reluctant to go around and be sent back to the end of the line. Like the incident that happened in 2025, some were tempted to get it on the ground regardless. Every year, it seems, somebody bends metal and maybe gets hurt.
The end of my Oshkosh ventures happened in the early 2000s. I had dutifully studied the arrival NOTAM and displayed the “Vintage Aircraft” sign in the 180. Bobby and I landed, as directed, over the top of a B-17 rolling out on the north runway. Scared me, even though, as you all know by now, I’m fearless.
We were expertly marshaled off the runway, but then the expert part ended. Some self-important lady was waving at me until, finally, I stuck my head out the open door and yelled, “Lady, if you can’t [expletive] see me, I can’t [expletive] see you.” For whatever reason, we didn’t get into the Vintage area but were relegated to a no-man’s-land at the far end of the airport. As we were unloading and staking it down, an obnoxious guy roared up on a golf cart and said, “Remember, you’ll have no access to your airplane because the grass area here is considered a taxiway.” I murmured to Bobby, “You wanna bet?”
We trudged to a lunch tent where we met some friends as prearranged. Bobby’s dry chicken sandwich and my Coke came to $15-plus. After our friends explained the procedure to get to registration on a series of buses, Bobby and I looked at each other. Me: “Whaddya think?” Him: “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
The airshow would soon begin so we raced back to the airplane. I even stopped a guy on a golf cart and told him my husband had suffered a heart attack at home. Would he please give us a ride?
“No.”
Well, we took off at the last minute and headed home with a fuel stop somewhere. I vowed that was my swan song at Oshkosh.
Editor’s note: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of FLYING Magazine.
This column first appeared in the October Issue 963 of the FLYING print edition.
