AirVenture 2015

[frogman]

My impressions....holy crap it's a crazy airplane geek fest. We went for 2 days and still didn't fully explore the warbirds or vintage areas. We did check out some of the warbirds but there were still a bunch we never saw. The Boeing plaza was cool with the first public display of the new fighter the USAF F-35. There was also an F22 doing a flight demo that was amazing. I did bump into one person working a booth in the drone area that had a FliteFest 2015 shirt on. I stopped and talked to him a little.

My favorite things I saw....the Screamin Sasquatch from Jacks Links was just crazy. I had seen an report about it but seeing and hearing it fly....holy crap it was crazy. Now the big question....when is someone in RC going to create a version of this. A traditional biplane with the addition of a jet engine underneath. Just crazy. The Harriers were pretty amazing too. I will say there is nothing as sweet sounding as the sound of warbird aerials flying overhead and the sound of P51 flying by on a high speed pass and that whine/squeal as it goes by is just too cool. I had never experienced that before.

Here are some pics I took with my cellphone for fun. I was doing a little work for my part time job at ProDRENALIN getting some flying footage to play with in our software. I will have some footage edited at some point I can share from the airshow. This is a link to my Photobucket folder where I uploaded them. My wife appears in a few of them. Her favorite was the Harrier. Gotta love my little windsock too. Quote of the week. "Harriers...turning jet fuel into noise"

http://s94.photobucket.com/user/frogmanproductions/slideshow/Airventure

 

[frogman]

A few other thoughts from Oshkosh this year. Friday's airshow featured red bull racer Ivanoff flying. Pretty impressive but the cool part was after his performance some Hobbico/Team Futaba guys did a flying demo. The first part had a pilot flying big plane the duplicate of Ivanoff's...I think they were Edge 540s but can't remember. They did what appeared to be side by side formation flying. Was pretty cool to see the RC plane mirroring the full size plane on the maneuvers. After that the other RC planes took to the skies. Two 1/3 scale warbirds and a big 17ft Super Cub. They put on a good 10 minute show and were very well received.

The good things from Oshkosh Airventure....

1. Planes as far as the eye can see. Geek out time.
2. Warbirds in big numbers. Nothing like a formation of 15+ P51s doing flybys.
3. EAA does an amazing job of running the show and keeping the place clean. Everything just worked. Coming from an job filming weddings over the years and seeing too many events run poorly I appreciate when it is done right.
4. Harriers are awesome.

The bad from Airventure.

1. The food vendors. Pretty much the same dry hockey puck hamburgers and brats and bad fries at all the concessions. A few concessions had some variety but the menu offerings were pretty slim even at those. For the price you paid it would be nice to get a decent burger. Would be nice to have options since most people aren't invited to the high end catered affairs at some of the high end company tents.

2. The obnoxious kid sitting in front of me on the flightline at the air show that had to jump up and take pictures of everything with his huge 400mm lens. He was working for a student media project but is it not possible to take pictures sitting down. I had some great shots on video that got interrupted from him standing up. I wanted to smack him a few times. I was shooting from my knees so I didn't obstruct those in chairs behind me but he had to stand up on almost every pass.

3. I could only go for 2 days :-( Why does it have to be soooo cool. I found out today that Arial Tweto from Flying Wild Alaska did a presentation. I loved that show and follow her on social media. If I would have known I would have made sure to be there today. That's my fault though.

 

[rcspaceflight]

2. The obnoxious kid sitting in front of me on the flightline at the air show that had to jump up and take pictures of everything with his huge 400mm lens. He was working for a student media project but is it not possible to take pictures sitting down. I had some great shots on video that got interrupted from him standing up. I wanted to smack him a few times. I was shooting from my knees so I didn't obstruct those in chairs behind me but he had to stand up on almost every pass.

That's one thing that I don't like about Airventure. There are a lot of really nice amazing people, but a lot of people that don't mind their manners too.

Last time I went (didn't make it this year due to finances) I got to the air show almost an hour early so I could sit right up front. Of course the entire "front row" was chairs that people left to save their spot. I thought about moving some and saying "you can't save spots like that" and being a bit of a jerk, but I figured "second row" was good enough. They would be sitting, I could stand when need be to see over them. So I was happy with were I was sitting, but every time something interesting on the ground happened, everybody bum rushed the front row and crowded me to the point that I was more like the 4th or 5th row. The worst was the time a camera crew stood right next to me and got me in the background while I was surrounded by people. I'm sure I had a horrible look on my face and rolled my eyes a few times.

Although admittedly other than that and a few other things, the people are generally nice. I just know that if I ever make it again I'm going to just sit more towards the back for the air shows. I'd rather miss the ground stuff entirely than be completely surrounded during them.

 

[frogman]

Next time we go, hopefully next year, we are taking our chairs and staking our spot out as soon as we get there. That's what everyone was doing when we arrived in the morning. You don't have to carry your chairs all day that way. That is a fairly common practice. At the local parade here in our town people put their chairs out at the curb early in the morning for the best seats. It doesn't bother me they had their spot staked out in the front row. It bothers me he had to stand up for every pass. You're in the front row....you can already see. I would love to see some of the pics the kid got....that lens he had was massive. I'm sure he got a few really nice pics.

 

[FlyingMonkey]

Next year we're all camping at Sponz's house and going to Airventure!

 

[earthsciteach]

Next year we're all camping at Sponz's house and going to Airventure!

I'm in!

 

[FlyingMonkey]

Thanks SPONZ!

 

[AkimboGlueGuns]

Yeah, at an event as large as Airventure, there a more than a couple "that one guy"s. Like in the RC flight line on Saturday. There were 3 separated(ish) flight lines at Pioneer Airport. One for normal sized planes (like a parkzone T-28), one for multirotors, and one for tiny planes (umx). Because we were sharing the airspace with all of Airventure's aircraft, you had to be very safety conscious, especially with the new Goodyear blimp flying right over head. But of course a guy with a DJI Phantom II decided to move to the middle of the airplane flight line, fly right up next to the blimp, not call any of his maneuvers, and attempt to fly in close proximity to the rest of the fixed wing aircraft with out asking their respective pilots. Oh yeah, and he ignored the AMA rep that told him to fly safely.

/rant

 

[Craftydan]

Oh yeah, and he ignored the AMA rep that told him to fly safely.

/rant

But, but, but, he WASN'T piloting it unsafely -- It's a DJI being operated in a senseless manner-- Clearly he wasn't piloting it at all!!!!



Sometimes I have to agree with DJI making the flight controller PIC and refusing to arm at certain locations. Of course there are plenty of other pilots who own these beasts and are fit to command . . . A crying shame this guy wasn't one of them.

 

[SP0NZ]

Next year we're all camping at Sponz's house and going to Airventure!

Book your reservations early, I have a feeling it will fill up fast.

 

[AkimboGlueGuns]

Our driveway isn't that big. :/

We did get 15 people that recognized our Flite Test shirts and commented.

 

[frogman]

I did see one guy at the drone area working a booth that had a Flitefest2015 shirt on. We chatted a moment and exchanged email addresses. I did see on line where someone did a drone video of Airventure from a drone. It was around sunrise or sunset and definitely up high. He was a little off the property and I think a over near the ultralight area. Still, why would you fly around that congested airspace. Just stupid.

 

[frogman]

I finally got some work done on my footage from Airventure. Here is a blog I wrote about the experience for my part-time job at ProDRENALIN. I filmed a bunch of airshow content to play with our extreme slow motion/timelapse software called ReSpeedr. The highlight video is at the end of the blog. Enjoy some of the flying and sounds of the airshow.

https://www.prodrenalin.com/the-adventure-of-airventure-2015/