With Wings As Eagles: Craig P. Steffen's Blog

Oshkosh 2013: The Show

2013 September 15 13:16

This year, I took comparatively few photos. I was only at the show for three days. Monday I was concentrating on going to the Aeromart, picking up stuff, then getting it back to my camp site. By that point, I really didn't want to go out again. Tuesday I spent the day with my Uncle Bob, from whom I caught the flying bug. We walked around and went to some cool stuff, but I didn't take many photos. Wednesday I had other things to do, so I didn't take a lot of time walking around. Then Thursday I left. Being at Oshkosh is an excersize in becoming used to B-17 bombers flying overhead; so I didn't take pictures of stuff like that.

You know you're at Oshkosh when traffic has to yield to, say, a Sopwith Camel taxi-ing. I didn't catch people having to stop for it, but here it is continuing to taxi to parking:

Various groups have displays of mock-ups of war-style tent-cities. They have authentic vehicles to go with them. Here's a really nice early Willy's Jeep.

And the obligatory instrument panel shot.

The Jeep has a manual transmission. The tall gearshift connects to the main gearbox. It's a dog-leg configuration, meaning that first gear is DOWN from neutral:

R  2
|  |
+--+
|  |
1  3
The other two smaller levers control the transfer case. One shifts from 2-wheel-drive to 4-wheel drive, the other selects low range or high range.

Again, traffic yielding to a taxiing airplane.

While walking around with my Uncle, I ran into Bruce King of bkfliers.org and his second prototype. He has designed and built a single-seat experimental amateur-built airplane that he's built two of and is now selling plans for. He first flew his second prototype this spring, and I've been followin his his work via the web. I got a chance to talk to him and look over the engine compartment of his airplane.

Bruce put a flywheel-end drive VW engine in it:



I always enjoy seeing interesting things that people use for cowl plugs.

One thing that was really cool was that for the first time in several years, Mooney itself had a presence at the show. Unfortunately, I only stopped by very very briefly on Monday because I was carrying my loot, and I didn't get there before they closed on Wednesday.

Three WW 1 era planes (replicas, I assume). I think the one in the center is full sized and had an actual radial engine; the other two had flat-4 VW engines.