When thinking of Oshkosh it would be easy to focus on the air show itself, but a big part of the experience can be the trip there. I take great delight in using my RV-8 to travel places that would be impractical by other means. We had great weather leaving SoCal on Saturday morning–flew over Edwards Air Force base, Vegas and soon made it to Cedar City (KCDC).
From there we went NE over Capital Reef to Saratoga (KSAA). Our next stop was Custer SD (KCUT). On this leg we did a lap around Devils Tower, Mt. Rushmore and Crazy Horse.
A relatively early morning had us heading East over the Badlands with a nice 15-knot tailwind and then miles of the greenest corn fields I have ever seen. A stop for gas and another review of the arrival NOTAM at Luverne (KLYV) and we were ready to press on to Oshkosh.
Even though the NOTAM is quite long the procedures are pretty simple. Arriving at Ripon there was quite a crowd so we slowed down early to let the bottleneck clear some. From there it was straight up the railroad tracks. ATC was doing a great job and in no time we were landing on the purple spot of 36L.
A new experience was taxiing off the runway and onto the sod, first time my aircraft had been on grass. In no time we were tied down and ready to register. New cars were on the field to ferry folks flying in to the EAA registration tent. A pretty good fun flying weekend all round.
