Sorry that we are somewhat behind with the blog but it has been a busy few days; we will try and catch up today.
Words fail when it comes to describe Oshkosh. I have penned a few below but will add more later together with pictures. First it is an enormous site covering hundreds of acres. Then there are thousands of aircraft of every conceivable type generally grouped by classification – so war birds, homebuilts, ancient and modern etc. Then there are the various aircraft manufacturers, avionics and other equipment stands for the larger companies and four large hangars for the smaller concerns. We were lucky because Phil as a TBM owner had an all time pass for the facilities at the Daher stand and Ed and I were able to tag a long as his guests. It made a great venue for meeting up, refreshing our water supplies – much needed as both days were hot and sunny – and for refreshments and light eats in the evening.
We spent our first morning wandering around and looking at the aircraft and most of the first afternoon watching the daily airshow. In the evening, we met up with the rest of the group at Daher and watched the first evening show; spectacular in every way with some airplanes having fireworks attached to their wings – what would our CAA say about that?
On Thursday morning, we started off by going for breakfast at the sea plane base followed by a wander round the stands and making a few modest purchases as well as talking to Garmin about possible equipment upgrades at some stage!! We continued to wander around for the first part of the afternoon before making our way back to the Basler FBO to get ready for our early evening departure to Westchester, our base for a visit to New York having said ‘Goodbye’ to the rest of our group who were returning to Europe the following morning.
The departure was chaotic; IFR flights were meant to be separated from VFR departures as we all had slot times. The marshallers totally failed to manage this and there was much gesticulation of waving arms by different marshallers all indicating different instructions which we eventually just ignored. We finally got off around 13 minutes late, not a big deal in itself but our destination ATC at Westchester closed at 11 pm and we were keen to arrive before they went home. Now we were going eastwards again, we gained an hour. It felt funny taking off at 0013 UTC in bright sunshine when it was the middle of night at home! The flight was lovely as the sun set and the stars came out but with slightly less favourable winds than forecast, we ran a few minutes late and closed our flight plan with New York approach as the Westchester tower controller had gone home. Luckily the runway lights are left on all night and the FBO chap was there to meet us with a taxi to take us to our hotel.
Unfortunately a fault has developed in the TBM pressurisation system which will have to be looked at tomorrow.
KOSH (Oshkosh) to KHPN (Westchester) 705 nm in 2 hr 52 min