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I got to fly myself to Oshkosh this year, in a plane of my own. w00t! The narrative of the journey, with all the gory details of the flying, is in this entry in August. This entry and the three after it have all the photos (which three weeks after I wrote the narrative entry, I've finally edited).
I had a few things to do to the airplane before going to Oshkosh. One
was making sure the lights were all up to snuff. One of the two
lights in the rotating beacon was out, so I ordered and replaced the
other one.
I also replaced the standard incandescent landing light with an LED
one. It was a bit more expensive, but it draws MUCH less current.
The specified approach to Oshkosh asks all airplanes to have all their
lights, including landing light, on throughout the entire approach. I
wanted to go easier on my electrical system. The old light is on the
right and the new one is on the left.
Here's the LED light, installed and wired. The old light is a
standard filament light, and so it doen't care which way electricity
flows across it. The LED DOES, and as it turns out, it needed it
flowing the opposite way as the old lights had. Fortunately there was
just enough extra slack in the wires to attach them in the right
direction without stretching.
In addition to printing out (and studying) the procedures in the
NOTAM, I printed out windshield signs to hold up so that the
marshallers on the ground will direct my airplane to the right spot.
The bottom one is for arrival, I want to park in "General Aviation
Camping" (which is the area known as the "North Forty" at Oshkosh.
The top sign is for departure, indicating that I'm intending to depart
using "Visual Flight Rules". You'll hear more about that in the
fourth entry on this trip.
And finally...I'm off! The Stratus sitting in its door handle
providing backup GPS guidance and weather updates
It was definitely summer Thunderstorm season. This trip was fairly
calm, but there were storms to the south behind me that I managed to
avoid (this is looking over my left shoulder.
It was nice weather, so I flew the route VFR, but I still had the GPSs
tuned in.
All of a sudden the Apollo started warning me a Restricted Zone.
There's a tiny tiny one in Indiana that I happened to fly near (I was
well above it but I didn't know that).
The restricted zone is the blue thing in the middle, labelled
"R-3405". It's apparently a tethered balloon.
I scheduled things so that I was at work a few days before I
actually left for Oshkosh, to combine trips. Here's my office, with
my iPad and the Stratus recharging.
I flew up to Oshkosh early Sunday morning, but I rented a car for just
one day starting late morning Saturday so that I could run around town
and get last-minute supplies and stuff. It also allowed me to bring
my luggage and supplies back out to the airplane the night before
departure, so that when I actually left, I only had one bag to walk
out to the plane with. The car I rented was a Nissan Sentra. I don't
have any photos of the outside, but here's the instrument panel:
And oddly enough, unliky the vast majority of cars nowadays, it has an
actual dedicated "accessory" position on the key cylinder.
In entry 2, I'll actually fly to Oshkosh itself (eventually).