I want an aviat husky so bad but Unfortunately I’m not made of money Got to do some “sporty” flying yesterday in a Navajo dodging clouds to stay vfr on a 20 mile flight (there was no reason to file)
Holy crap! I'm still working on my PPL, but seeing that makes me never want to go! Is it worse on certain days?
No, its bad all the time. But today is pretty bad being the first day of the show. For the newer flier, I recommend flying into New Holstein's Municipal airport, just across Lake Winnebago. The Super Cubs set up base there. I worked at the New Holstein Airport for a couple of years mowing lawn for a high school summer job. Its a quick flight over for stuff, without the complete zoo that Wittman Field is like. Fondy is also an option, but that airport is very busy now too. Washington Island off Door County also has a lot of interest, as its only an hour flight away from OSH, with the charm of being on a very quiet island. They do a huge fish boil as a fund raiser and a lot of pilots fly there just for that. That one fund raiser is where that airport gets a bulk of its money.
The ATC guys at OSH are awesome. And that arrival stream is probably even worse than it looks. Probably lots of planes not showing up on the screen. Makes you keep your head on a swivel.
Question for the pilots... How would you compare the risks of flying GA aircraft vs those of say....roadracing? I took up flying recently after quitting racing ( until my daughters are older) but they number of accidents/deaths I've been reading about seem really high. Granted, until a few months ago I never followed GA news, but I'm questioning my decision a lot lately. It's making me a bit nervous to fly, even. If I ever flew a commercial jet I'd feel pretty safe, but these osh kosh accidents in particular are starting to make me uneasy.
Personally, I found that preparation and risk-averse decisions could lower risks down to a level (real or perceived, that's debatable) that I could never reach on the racetrack because so much depends on the people around you. For instance, I have a healthy fear of mid-air collisions and I can't imagine I would never have flown into Oshkosh. Not because I'm a total chicken, I think. I have landed a full popsicle at night on an instrument approach in the Poconos with a low ceiling (OK, not a great example of careful preparation ) and never felt my heart rate getting faster. But damn, anytime I know there is traffic around that I can't see, that's a whole other story.
Like many things, you control most of the risk. Properly briefed day VFR, very low risk. Night flight in IMC and mountainous terrain in a single engine, very high-risk. Make decisions accordingly. Survivability is very high when the airplane impacts the ground in control flight.
Webcams: https://www.eaa.org/en/airventure/eaa-airventure-news-and-multimedia/eaa-airventure-webcams/air-show Certainly better than G-man's Iowa Corn Growing webcams.
Never been hurt flying little planes, and I’ve flown lots of crappy planes in lots of crappy places/circumstances. First time I ever flew into Osh I had a freshly broken leg in a cast. I was with a business partner, we were going to work a booth at the show. He listened to ATC inbound, and got so nervous he thought he was happier with me driving one legged than him...
One of my more memorable moments of the EAA show was when I was in undergrad at UW-Oshkosh. I lived up there for the summer and saw that they had a shuttle bus from the Wittman Field concourse building (when they still did commercial flights, home of the shortest commercial flight route on record, having scheduled flights from Oshkosh to Appleton). The shuttle bus was 50 cents. So me and this girl I knew took the shuttle bus one day. We found out as we went along it was a bus that drove around and picked up pilots from their planes/campsites to bring to the main grounds. We ended up being inside the show, on the flight line, for basically an admission price of 50 cents. Couldn't beat that. That was the year the Concorde was there, IIRC. When that thing opened up all four engines at full thrust, it was a seismic event. They did Mach 1 lunches over Lake Michigan and Canada. Get in, have lunch, hit Mach 1, come back to Osh, all in an hour or so.
F dat! When I took a job in New York City, I tried to fly out of Teterboro. I spent so much time on the ground trying to get out, and again trying to get in that I quit for five years until I moved to the DC area.
If you do the training, stay current and follow the rules... GA is quite safe. Much safer than roadracing.
