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This entry is pictures of my camp site at Oshkosh and the charging implements that I brought along.
Here's where I camped, at the west end of the North 40. The position
is being indicated by he Stratus GPS.
The inital unloading:
As a historical note, the weather at the time I landed was ASS cold.
Something like 43 degrees F and windy. And I didn't have anything
with long sleeves, because Oshkosh tends to be hot or humid in the
summer. While I was unloading and pitching the tend, I wore my
headset. I looked like a big-ol dork but at least my ears were warm.
I tied the plane down to "The Claw" anchors.
The knot securin the rope to the anchor is a double-bowline.
The top of the rope is tied to the plane's tie-down loops with two
double locking half-hitches.
I pitched the tend behind the right wing facing the fuselage
as close to the wing as I could make it.
That way, I could step out of the tend and be at the luggage door in
about two steps, which was nice.
My walkway in and out was between the horizontal stabilizer and the
tent, which isn't ideal, but it worked, and kept the whole camp site
fairly compact.
I realized I was going to be mostly away from plug-in electricity, with my phone and laptop and camera. In the past, I've brought a big battery pack to charge things from. Those dont' last very long, though. So this year I stopped by Harbor Freight and bought a brief-case size fold-out solar panel, with fittings so that I can connect it to car chargers to charge my gear.
Here's the briefcase solar panel sitting on the tail catching the
morning sun:
On the wing getting the mid-day sun
And then on the windshield to catch the late afternoon sun
The solar panel has a cable attached to it, that comes in the lower
right to the plug at the bottom center:
The it plugs into a car-charger-type socket (top center). Then
there's a car charger at the top center (with the blue light), into
which is plugged a usb cable which then charges a device.
Here's another charger charging the Stratus unit:
There are charging stations around; there's a big one at the North 40
shower house. Here's someone who has a battery back like I had who
had plugged them there:
EAA had other places around the grounds for this function too:
Honda combined this concept with advertising both for themselves and
their generators by putting stations like this around the grounds:
This is a running generator with a couple of power strips on a little
platform. It also had several chargers and cables already. I
plugged in and charged my phone at one of these a couple of time.
This station was right by the food court, and it was well-used.
Ok, finally time to depart to Oshkosh. Early Sunday morning. Here's
the end of the route:
North through Illinois, then curve west to fly to the city of Ripon to
start the VFR arrival procedure. By the way, it was GREAT to have the
NOTAM stored in the documents folder in Foreflight.
Once under way, I realized I was going to tangle with a bit of
weather.
The colored blocks are AIRMETs, which are areas of meteorological
warnings. The grey one is IFR.
I also realized my course was going to cross throguh some rain, so I
diverted a bit farther west.
Having diverted around the precip, I was noticing that the ceilings
(green and blue boxes) ahead of me were getting pretty low, so I
stopped and took a look at things at Rockford, Illinois.
I waited an hour and a half, at which point the weather seemed to be
getting better rather than worse, so I headed out again. Things were
mostly better, so I continued on into Oshkosh.
I don't have any photos of the last part of the flight; I was a single pilot, doing it for the first time, and so I was kinda busy. I hope someday I can have a movie camera in the plane taking footage when I go.