Good evening, I'm considering flying to EAA Airventure this year (first time) and camping under the airplane for a couple nights. For those that have done this before - would you recommend it? How are the facilities? My wife would be coming, and she's more of a nice resort type of person... I'm hoping the showers and things like that are decent and clean? Thanks!
If you are flying a non-homebuilt, non-vintage aircraft, you will most likely be camping in the North 40. This is where we have camped for many years (even though we now have a homebuilt -- we can't leave our peeps!), and it's a little piece of heaven. Picture a few thousand planes, parked wingtip to wingtip. Stand on your wing, and look at them stretch to the horizon, as far as you can see. That kind of heaven! Conditions are fairly crude. You can't have a fire, for example. Still, with the North 40 ringed with bars and restaurants, and with dozens of food vendors on the field (including one in the North 40, the last few years), you don't have to cook anything if you don't want to. The showers are clean and plentiful, especially for women, who are outnumbered by men 10 to 1. It's still campground showers, though, so tell your wife to get used to it. We will be there all week, doing our usual Wednesday night party and having beers and hangar flying most of the week. The best part of the North 40 is to get there after the air show, just as the field reopens, pull your lawn chair up to Rwy 27, and watch arrivals and departures. That's the REAL airshow, and we usually have peanuts (really!) and beers while we rate landings and marvel at the cha-cha line of planes. Dress appropriately for Wisconsin, which means shorts, sandals, and winter parkas. The weather can flip back and forth multiple times during the week, so be ready. Don't expect to see the whole show in two days. We stay the whole week, and usually miss something. This will be our 33rd consecutive Oshkosh fly-in, with luck. You will love it!
While I have a dorm room booked for the trip up there, I may have to come squat in the N40 with you guys! Sounds like a blast.
Exactly my question the first few times I saw the balloon over the SOS Brothers' tent. Best food near Airventure, cold beer, and yes, bikinis. I walk over there once or twice a day from HBC. For breakfast, the breakfast subs from the Subway near the conjunction of warbirds, homebuilts, and the North 40 is convenient and tasty.
I like when it rains sometimes. Gives me a chance to wipe down the plane and get all the bug spots off without too much elbow grease.
I think rain implies a gentle washing of water from the sky. That does not happen at Osh. It is clear or it is gully washing torrential downpours. None of this sissy gentle rain nonsense
And if you can afford it, LeSeur's (sp?) Bakery directly out the hole in the north fence and across the street is absolute heaven if you like pastry, good omelets, and the like for breakfast. The little food tent at the south edge of the north 40 isn't bad either. Food will be the least of your problems at OSH. Baked skin and thunderstorms rate right up there with the real problems. Jim
Ha ..... I remember 15-20 years ago giving my forum standing on top of the forum tent that the torrential rain and howling winds took down the night before. That was before they built the new "concrete tents" for the forums. Jim
Personally, I can handle rain and sunburns.... It is the potential for hail to beat my plane to death that keeps me awake at night...
1) Someone would have to let me borrow a ladder 2) I suspect I would go right though the fabric once I got up there. (But I don't really know - has anyone tried it?)
The google map image will give you a good idea of all the planes! Looks like they updated the image while the show was going on. https://www.google.com/maps/search/oshkosh+hotel/@43.990247,-88.5704913,2184m/data=!3m1!1e3 I'm not much of a camper but will camp in the north 40 every year. If you get parked on the north side of 9/27 the bathrooms and showers aren't quite as nice but you are closer to the Hilton and some of the restaurants are within an easy walk. There is also a goodwill that is useful for getting stuff that won't fit in the plane (bikes, chairs, etc). If you get there earlier in the week you will be parking closer to the show entrance, nicer showers, etc. Where are you flying in from?
So what is the definition of "Vintage" when it comes to Osh & camping? It seems a highly variable word anyway.
The official EAA definition of vintage is bogus, IMHO. Letting currently produced (albeit old) aircraft park in Vintage ruins it for me. Sorry, but you guys parking your Cherokees next to Stagger wings and Travel airs in Vintage are embarrassing yourselves. Park out in the North 40 with the rest of us, and leave Vintage for the cool old Howards and Culvers, please.
I still don't know the official EAA definition of 'vintage,' other than that some people don't like it. "You can please all of the people some of the time, or you can please some of the people all of the time, but you cannot please all of the people all of the time."
There are three divisions of "vintage" within EAA ... Antique: 17 Dec '03 through 31 Aug '45 Classic: 1 Sep '45 through 31 Dec '55 Contemporary: 1 Jan '56 through 31 Dec '70 Thanks, Jim
Thanks for everyone's feedback! It sounds awesome, and we're probably going to do it. I'm in Chicago, so it should be a really short flight. One other question - what do people do about charging tablets, cameras, etc? Just bring a lot of battery packs? In the photos I've seen, it looks like the electrical hookups are for the RV section, not the airplanes.
There are charging stations set up outside of most showers...... You plug in,, get a shower and you are good to go for another day...... Works real well..
Yes, I would recommend it. I camped in the vintage area last year and had a spot next to the road. It was a short walk to the toilet but a long walk to the showers. I had a 10x10 tent I could stand up in to change clothes and a 10 x 10 screened shelter for my cooking. I cooked eggs and bacon every morning and cooked several things for dinner. I ate lunch at the show. I had an air mattress to sleep on with regular sheets but one night I did get into my sleeping bag. I arrived Friday and left Thursday morning. I would recomend arrivng Saturday and touring the EAA museum on Sunday. The night show on Wednesday is worth staying for.
I had a metal security box that I drilled a hole in and fed a plug through. On the inside I mounted a power strip. I plugged my 2 phones, tablet, and radio into the power strip and each night I plugged the box into an outlet behind the concession stand and locked it with a bicycle chain to the building.
There are electrical outlets at the Green and Red shower buildings in the North 40. I recommend you bring your own power strip for extra outlets. At any given time there will be thousands of dollars worth of iPads and other devices charging and left unattended and nothing in my 4 years of experience has ever happened to anyone's stuff. What I did last year was I got a set of portable solar panels that can charge USB devices. Working in conjunction with a USB battery pack I was able to keep my phone charged up the entire time. This is the solar panel I got: http://www.amazon.com/Anker®-Dual-Port-Charger-PowerIQ-Technology/dp/B00E3OL5U8
I think you said the magic word 'wife' and that changes everything sometimes ... But everybody should camp at OSH at least once. It's what you do. Especially your first trip. Two nights you should be fine, any longer depends on how good of a camper you are. Good luck and hope we'll see you there. We plan to go back on our second trip this year.
I liked camping in the vintage but can't really do so. I depend on the venues off the airport for most dinners (can't carry that big a stove or that much food). They're a rather long way from vintage. Besides, all the best parties are in the North 40.
General question: is there a limit on how long ahead of time one can fly in and begin camping in the North 40? Zero days? One day? One week?
Agreed. And if someone from the area looks at a radar picture and says, "that thing is coming to kick our ass", believe them. It's time to get back to camp, bring everything inside the tent, tie down anything loose, and prepare for rain and wind that'll probably last all night. (Thanks Kent. Ha.) If you are used to dry isolated thunderstorms like we see out West here, you're in for a "treat" once the Wisconsin style ones start up. Line after line after line after line of rain bands that'll last far into the night. They don't dry up and dissipate after sunset.
We actually have a special place reserved for those who can show their aircraft was built before December 17, 1903. The Smithsonian would also like to speak with them.
There are dozens of aircraft that were built and flew before 17 Dec '03. Montgomery in San Diego, Lilienthal in Germany, Montgolfier in France, and they were all aircraft. Not airplanes. Jim
To my knowledge, none have made it to Oshkosh. As I said, we do have a special place reserved for any of those.
I'll see if I can find any of the remnants of Lyman Gilmore's steam powered coal fired flash boiler monoplane he claimed to have flown a year before the Wright Brothers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdUOe0vdJhA Jim
