Page 20 - Volume 15 Number 10

EAA Chairman Tom Poberezny announced his retirement during AirVenture 2011.to a single area of interest, such as the International Aerobatic Club, the Warbirds of America camp, the Vintage Aircraft’s Red Barn or the vendors lined up along the central plaza.Why Oshkosh?Why is AirVenture staged in an out-of-the-way spot like Oshkosh, Wis.? The show settled there in 1970 because it had its outgrown earlier Rockford, Ill., venue. The Experimental Aircraft Association moved its headquarters onto property adjacent to the Oshkosh airport and began building an impressive aviation museum. As the show grew, site improvements were made and buildings went up. It probably couldn’t have happened anywhere else.The welcoming city of 66,000 looks forward to increasing its population by an order of magnitude18 • TWIN & TURBINEeach summer. A metropolitan airport couldn’t absorb the chaos and confusion of such an influx. AirVenture’s traffic flow neatly bypasses hub cities like Chicago, Milwaukee and Minneapolis and the various organizing entities have gotten the logistics down to a fine art. Upward of 6,000 volunteers step forward to help with the show, augmenting EAA’s staff of about 200.There are very few such massive gatherings of like- minded people that can compare to the annual migration of aviation enthusiasts to Oshkosh. Similar to a religious pilgrimage, with overtones of a rock music festival, country fair, vintage car rally and military reenactment mixed in, it is, quite simply, an aviation extravaganza. Too commonly written off as a sport aircraft gathering, the Experimental Aircraft Association’s mid-summer AirVenture event has become a venue for all aspects of aviation.For example, this year’s AirVenture featured the first- ever public showing of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner. The new composite-construction airliner was landed at Oshkosh for a one-day stopover on Friday, allowing the assembled enthusiasts to troop aboard and engage in a walk-around. In previous years, the show has been visited by the Airbus A380, Concorde SST, Guppy cargo haulers and various Boeing 747 iterations. Military attractions have included the C-5B, An-124 and C-17 transports, SR-71 and U-2 spy planes, and tankers, fighters, bombers and trainers of all types.AirVenture remains, however, an enthusiast’s show. Not dominated by commercial competition or military thunder, it is a showcase for all things aviation. Antique restorations and warbird formations, homebuilt completions and ultralights, seaplanes and gyroplanes – each has its own area and following. But, there’s no denying the marketing opportunities that the Oshkosh show presents, given its attendance of over a half-million.OCTOBER 2011