Mon, Jul 26
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EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2027 - Oshkosh, WI
For one week every summer a regional airport in Wisconsin becomes the busiest airport in the world, and the control tower stops using callsigns because there is no time for them. Controllers talk to pilots by the colour of their aircraft instead. Rock your wings if you copy.
EAA AirVenture gets described as an airshow, which undersells it to the point of inaccuracy. It is closer to a temporary city of aviation people, roughly 600,000 of them, who fly in from everywhere and then camp underneath the wings of the aircraft they arrived in. Around ten thousand planes come. They park in rows on the grass sorted by type, so you walk past a field of homebuilts and then a field of warbirds and then a field of 1940s taildraggers whose owners are sitting in lawn chairs beside them, visibly waiting to be asked about it.
That last part is what people miss. There is no velvet rope anywhere on the field. The man restoring a P-51 will talk to you for forty minutes if you ask one honest question, and the whole convention runs on exactly that transaction. Friendships and more than a few careers have started at a folding chair beside somebody's airplane.
Practical things worth knowing: it is hot, it is flat, and it is enormous, so the people who enjoy it most are the ones who accept early that they will not see all of it. Camping in the North 40 among the arriving aircraft is the real experience and fills up far in advance. The afternoon airshow runs daily regardless of what else is happening, and the night airshow, which closes with pyrotechnics fired from aerobatic aircraft trailing fire, is the one veterans tell first-timers not to skip under any circumstances. Bring ear protection you would actually wear, because warbird departures are not loud in the way a concert is loud.
The arrival procedure has become folklore in its own right. Pilots flying in follow a railroad line to a town called Ripon and then on to Fisk, flying a published approach while making no radio calls of their own, simply being spoken to from the ground. There are people who train all year to do this once, and who talk about it afterward the way other people talk about a pilgrimage.
Most readers will never set an aircraft down on a coloured dot on a Wisconsin runway while someone in a lawn chair tells them which one. Knowing that it happens every July is a slightly larger life than not knowing.
For one week every summer a regional airport in Wisconsin becomes the busiest airport in the world, and the control tower stops using callsigns because there is no time for them. Controllers talk to pilots by the colour of their aircraft instead. Rock your wings if you copy.
EAA AirVenture gets described as an airshow, which undersells it to the point of inaccuracy. It is closer to a temporary city of aviation people, roughly 600,000 of them, who fly in from everywhere and then camp underneath the wings of the aircraft they arrived in. Around ten thousand planes come. They park in rows on the grass sorted by type, so you walk past a field of homebuilts and then a field of warbirds and then a field of 1940s taildraggers whose owners are sitting in lawn chairs beside them, visibly waiting to be asked about it.
That last part is what people miss. There is no velvet rope anywhere on the field. The man restoring a P-51 will talk to you for forty minutes if you ask one honest question, and the whole convention runs on exactly that transaction. Friendships and more than a few careers have started at a folding chair beside somebody's airplane.
Practical things worth knowing: it is hot, it is flat, and it is enormous, so the people who enjoy it most are the ones who accept early that they will not see all of it. Camping in the North 40 among the arriving aircraft is the real experience and fills up far in advance. The afternoon airshow runs daily regardless of what else is happening, and the night airshow, which closes with pyrotechnics fired from aerobatic aircraft trailing fire, is the one veterans tell first-timers not to skip under any circumstances. Bring ear protection you would actually wear, because warbird departures are not loud in the way a concert is loud.
The arrival procedure has become folklore in its own right. Pilots flying in follow a railroad line to a town called Ripon and then on to Fisk, flying a published approach while making no radio calls of their own, simply being spoken to from the ground. There are people who train all year to do this once, and who talk about it afterward the way other people talk about a pilgrimage.
Most readers will never set an aircraft down on a coloured dot on a Wisconsin runway while someone in a lawn chair tells them which one. Knowing that it happens every July is a slightly larger life than not knowing.
EAA AirVenture gets described as an airshow, which undersells it to the point of inaccuracy. It is closer to a temporary city of aviation people, roughly 600,000 of them, who fly in from everywhere and then camp underneath the wings of the aircraft they arrived in. Around ten thousand planes come. They park in rows on the grass sorted by type, so you walk past a field of homebuilts and then a field of warbirds and then a field of 1940s taildraggers whose owners are sitting in lawn chairs beside them, visibly waiting to be asked about it.
That last part is what people miss. There is no velvet rope anywhere on the field. The man restoring a P-51 will talk to you for forty minutes if you ask one honest question, and the whole convention runs on exactly that transaction. Friendships and more than a few careers have started at a folding chair beside somebody's airplane.
Practical things worth knowing: it is hot, it is flat, and it is enormous, so the people who enjoy it most are the ones who accept early that they will not see all of it. Camping in the North 40 among the arriving aircraft is the real experience and fills up far in advance. The afternoon airshow runs daily regardless of what else is happening, and the night airshow, which closes with pyrotechnics fired from aerobatic aircraft trailing fire, is the one veterans tell first-timers not to skip under any circumstances. Bring ear protection you would actually wear, because warbird departures are not loud in the way a concert is loud.
The arrival procedure has become folklore in its own right. Pilots flying in follow a railroad line to a town called Ripon and then on to Fisk, flying a published approach while making no radio calls of their own, simply being spoken to from the ground. There are people who train all year to do this once, and who talk about it afterward the way other people talk about a pilgrimage.
Most readers will never set an aircraft down on a coloured dot on a Wisconsin runway while someone in a lawn chair tells them which one. Knowing that it happens every July is a slightly larger life than not knowing.
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EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2027 - Oshkosh, WI
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Monday, July 26, 2027
8:00 AM CDT – 11:00 AM CDT
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· until Aug 1, 2027
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For one week every summer a regional airport in Wisconsin becomes the busiest airport in the world, and the control tower stops using callsigns because there is no time for them. Controllers talk to pilots by the colour of their aircraft instead. Rock your wings if you copy.
EAA AirVenture gets described as an airshow, which undersells it to the point of inaccuracy. It is closer to a temporary city of aviation people, roughly 600,000 of them, who fly in from everywhere and then camp underneath the wings of the aircraft they arrived in. Around ten thousand planes come. They park in rows on the grass sorted by type, so you walk past a field of homebuilts and then a field of warbirds and then a field of 1940s taildraggers whose owners are sitting in lawn chairs beside them, visibly waiting to be asked about it.
That last part is what people miss. There is no velvet rope anywhere on the field. The man restoring a P-51 will talk to you for forty minutes if you ask one honest question, and the whole convention runs on exactly that transaction. Friendships and more than a few careers have started at a folding chair beside somebody's airplane.
Practical things worth knowing: it is hot, it is flat, and it is enormous, so the people who enjoy it most are the ones who accept early that they will not see all of it. Camping in the North 40 among the arriving aircraft is the real experience and fills up far in advance. The afternoon airshow runs daily regardless of what else is happening, and the night airshow, which closes with pyrotechnics fired from aerobatic aircraft trailing fire, is the one veterans tell first-timers not to skip under any circumstances. Bring ear protection you would actually wear, because warbird departures are not loud in the way a concert is loud.
The arrival procedure has become folklore in its own right. Pilots flying in follow a railroad line to a town called Ripon and then on to Fisk, flying a published approach while making no radio calls of their own, simply being spoken to from the ground. There are people who train all year to do this once, and who talk about it afterward the way other people talk about a pilgrimage.
Most readers will never set an aircraft down on a coloured dot on a Wisconsin runway while someone in a lawn chair tells them which one. Knowing that it happens every July is a slightly larger life than not knowing.
EAA AirVenture gets described as an airshow, which undersells it to the point of inaccuracy. It is closer to a temporary city of aviation people, roughly 600,000 of them, who fly in from everywhere and then camp underneath the wings of the aircraft they arrived in. Around ten thousand planes come. They park in rows on the grass sorted by type, so you walk past a field of homebuilts and then a field of warbirds and then a field of 1940s taildraggers whose owners are sitting in lawn chairs beside them, visibly waiting to be asked about it.
That last part is what people miss. There is no velvet rope anywhere on the field. The man restoring a P-51 will talk to you for forty minutes if you ask one honest question, and the whole convention runs on exactly that transaction. Friendships and more than a few careers have started at a folding chair beside somebody's airplane.
Practical things worth knowing: it is hot, it is flat, and it is enormous, so the people who enjoy it most are the ones who accept early that they will not see all of it. Camping in the North 40 among the arriving aircraft is the real experience and fills up far in advance. The afternoon airshow runs daily regardless of what else is happening, and the night airshow, which closes with pyrotechnics fired from aerobatic aircraft trailing fire, is the one veterans tell first-timers not to skip under any circumstances. Bring ear protection you would actually wear, because warbird departures are not loud in the way a concert is loud.
The arrival procedure has become folklore in its own right. Pilots flying in follow a railroad line to a town called Ripon and then on to Fisk, flying a published approach while making no radio calls of their own, simply being spoken to from the ground. There are people who train all year to do this once, and who talk about it afterward the way other people talk about a pilgrimage.
Most readers will never set an aircraft down on a coloured dot on a Wisconsin runway while someone in a lawn chair tells them which one. Knowing that it happens every July is a slightly larger life than not knowing.
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