EAA Oshkosh

With No AirVenture, What’s Next?

May 4, 2020 by Scott Spangler

Humans hate uncertainty, so after reading EAA’s early morning email on May 1 that confirmed what many expected, uncounted thousands of aviation-oriented minds posed, in one form or another, an unsettling question, “With no AirVenture, what’s next?”

The honest answer is that there is no certain answer. The future is an ethereal miasma of possibilities good and bad. Only time will tell. In all probability, there will be another AirVenture, but only time—and our mitigation and vaccination of and against the virus will determine when that will be.

For many humans, bred to hair-trigger impatience by a consumer society dedicated to immediate gratification of our immediate wants (assuming, naturally, that we can afford them), this reality will insufficiently fill the vacuum left by no AirVenture in 2020. Pointing fingers at our political foes and blaming them and their allies for one’s individual inconveniences seems an unproductive pastime in a number of online conversations.

When analyzed from any pragmatic perspective, EAA made the right decision, they made it for the right reasons, and they made it at the right time. And EAA reinforced the reality that the faithful who have made their annual pilgrimages to Oshkosh are, indeed, family. While it is easy for some to sacrifice strangers to the virus to ensure their economic and emotional survival, that willingness to sacrifice others is harder when those individuals are family.

For those pointing fingers, shoveling blame, and crying for sympathy because no AirVenture has inconvenienced them, they will readily find sympathy in the dictionary. Empathy might be a better emotional response. Consider this: For many aviation publications, especially those that monthly feed the needs of those who fly for fun, AirVenture is where they harvest many of the stories that fill the pages we so eagerly turn throughout the year.

Prudent publications always have a number of stories, ready to go, in the bank because, obviously, stuff happens. But that reservoir won’t last long, let alone a year or more. In finding ways to work with travel restrictions and social distancing, let alone the economic consequences facing all involved, their lives will be truly interesting.

The only living entity that truly has a right to be unhappy with no AirVenture this year is the coronavirus itself. Self-isolation and social distancing have made it harder for the virus to find and infect new hosts. If it was a sentient being, the virus was surely looking forward to what would have been a feeding frenzy every morning and evening at the communal bathhouses that serve the multitudes of aviation pilgrims living in Camp Scholler and the North & South 40s. — Scott Spangler, Editor

AirVenture Surprises & Snowbird Respect

August 12, 2019 by Scott Spangler

As it seemed last year, the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels low-level fly-by at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh this year seemed to catch many people by surprise. I don’t mean to shatter your illusions, but nothing at AirVenture happens as a surprise, especially when it involves airplanes. Every flight is carefully planned and coordinated with the AirVenture Air Boss and ATC. And every morning at Press Headquarters, the legendary EAA communication director, Dick Knapinski, spoils the day’s surprises in detail.

On Thursday morning, he told the handful of us in attendance (given the goodies he shares, I’m surprised more members of the media don’t attend) that the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds would, at the start of the air show, make four low-passes during their fly-by appearance as they, like the Blue Angels, traveled from one scheduled performance to the next. But the next item is what caught my attention. Around 2 p.m., a Canadian Forces Snowbird would be arriving in his CT-114 Tutor. And rather than performing, “he’ll be camping in the Vintage area,” Dick said, qualifying his camping spot by noting that his jet was made in 1964.

Certainly, the military forces of different nations can’t be that different. Flying a squadron bird from the Snowbird home base in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada, on a camping trip to EAA AirVenture Oshkosh would be akin to me using one of the ship’s small boats to go fishing when I was aboard the USS Blue Ridge (LCC-19) in the mid-1970s. My curiosity put a ring through my nose and led me to Vintage to wait.

Right about 2 p.m., the red and white Tutor made a couple of low passes, landed, and taxied to vintage camping. A tug arrived to position it on a finger of pavement next to the grass that would be the pilot’s campsite. The aviator in the red flight suit, with Blake McNaughton embroidered on it, was obviously in command. A captain in the Canadian Forces, he’s the Snowbirds’ flight safety officer. (I didn’t get the name of his squadron mate, who was attired in standard-issue green Nomex.)

Before I could ask the obvious question, the Thunderbirds made their appearance, and McNaughton was clearly more interested in filling out the necessary aircraft paperwork and putting his Tutor safely to bed after the tug driver jockeyed it into position. “Oh, yeah, we camp just like everyone else at Oshkosh.” And when the entire Snowbirds team performed at AirVenture in 2016, a couple of us tent camped.”

But a solo camping trip? “Our chain of command understands that Oshkosh is a cultural icon. [Camping] is what you do when you come here. We don’t take ourselves too seriously; we have a good time. We set up tents and camp. It’s great! We want the full, rich Oshkosh experience.” (With no room in the jet, they made separate travel arrangement for their tents and camping gear.)

Perhaps there are differences in the military attitudes among the national forces. On reflection, a solo camping trip to AirVenture is some genius guerilla PR, a subtle statement that supports the demonstration squadron’s ambassadorial mission. But McNaughton demonstrated an even more forceful example of the character and quality of the Canadian Armed Forces. Kneeling on the wing, digging the wheel chocks out of little compartment behind the cockpit, when he heard the first few notes of America’s national anthem, he sprang to attention. (His squadron mate, clearly sat at attention.) He stood there, in rigid contrast, as the flight line mass of U.S. flagpole patriots fluttered about in self-absorbed oblivion. — Scott Spangler, Editor

EAA Oshkosh: The Best AirVenture Photography Refocuses Participatory Emotions

June 20, 2016 by Scott Spangler

In the English language, there must be a word that summarizes the emotional conflation of the self-satisfaction that comes from a distinctive personal accomplishment and the whispers from a subconscious troll holding up that same achievement as primary evidence of intellectual failure. It that word exists, I haven’t found it yet, but it perfectly describes my personal and professional connection to EAA AirVenture Oshkosh. Or, at least, it didn’t until the Quattro Publishing Group generously offered me a copy a new book, EAA Oshkosh: The Best AirVenture Photography.”

Now preparing for the 2016 edition of AirVenture (July 24-31) I made my inaugural pilgrimage to Oshkosh in 1978, and haven’t missed a year since. And that is the source of my emotional ying and yang word search. I’m both proud and disappointed that I’ve participated in this event for more than half my life. Dedication is a contributing component of my pride, and disbelief, if that’s the right word, that I’ve not at least invested the week in pursuit of another interest because there is more to my intellectual and emotional life than airplanes.

Stepping through the book’s 220 pages, I’ve had to reassess my relationship with Oshkosh because it has recalled long-buried memories of seminal moments filed during my previous 37 visits filed in memory. Drawing on the EAA archives, the book depicts in 240 color and a few black-and-white photos the annual convention of its members from its inception in 1953 (which, coincidentally, was the year I started my life’s adventure).

The photos are collected in chapters that mirror the AirVenture flight line from north to south: Warbirds, Homebuilts, Aerobatics & Air Shows, Life at Oshkosh (the show’s “town square” display area that has been identified by its various sponsors over the decades), Vintage Aircraft, Ultralights, and the Seaplane Base. Jim Busha, Hal Bryan, and Dick Knapinski, all EAA staffers, provide succinct words of context for newcomers.

As Jack Pelton, EAA chairman and CEO (who’s done a marvelous job in completing the organization’s previously contentious transition from the founding family), said in his introduction, “EAA AirVenture Oshkosh is, more than anything, an individual experience.”

Through that lens, my first decade of participation was the best, the most eagerly anticipated and fondly remembered. Thereafter, attendance was part of my job description, with Flight Training magazine (with sweltering weeklong memories of booth duty in the old exhibit building), then with EAA itself (a behind-the curtain experience rich with greater appreciation of the effort of volunteers and staffers who make it happen each year), and now with JetWhine and others who fund my participation.

Paging my way down the visual flight line punctuated the dominant memories of work with visual call cards that led to long filed memories of face-to-face encounters with the airplanes and, more importantly, the people who gave them life. I won’t bore you with the details of my stroll down my flight line of memories, but I will offer my appreciation to the book’s creators for sharing images of a number of these individuals, with very few aviation celebrities among them. It is better that you get a copy of the book (available July 1, 2016, $24.99, from ShopEAA.org, Amazon, Barnes & Noble) and perambulate through your memories (or make your inaugural flight line stroll, which will, perhaps, motivate a long debated pilgrimage to Oshkosh).

Finishing my journey through the book, a surprise awaited me on page 224, which lists the credits. The images on the preceding pages are not individually credited, and none of them recalled a visual memory of the thousands of photos I’ve taken at AirVenture during my decades of work there, which was why reading my name among the credited photographers was a surprise. Repeated perusal of each image and comparing them to memories of AirVentures past has, so far, not made any connections. But it has changed my usual dolorous anticipation of this year’s aviation convocation to the eager anticipation I haven’t experienced in more than 20 years. I hope to see you there! — Scott Spangler, Editor

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