9 Friday Thoughts About EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2019

My week at AirVenture isn't over. I'm here for the duration. I don't want it to end, and while it's true that I never want it to end, this year it's palpable. It's already been a special show, and we've got three days to go.

Enjoy these photos of the night airshow and more from EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2019!

9. A Legacy Of A Different Kind: On the night before the show started, I stopped by the Cirrus Aircraft pre-show party to say hi and wish departing Cirrus leader and co-founder Dale Klapmeier a fond retirement. I've been snooping around and folks who know tell me he's already enjoying stepping back. I've known Dale for a long time. I met him and his brother Alan at AOPA Las Vegas in the early 1990s when I had a chance to fly the company's VK30 kitplane model. It was Cirrus Design's only model, and if you're wondering what happened to it!well, it was a bundle of cool ideas, all of which presented risk to the success of the project, so they moved on from it. But from Day One, I realized that this was a special company, one that had an actual, identifiable DNA. Innovation, technology, sleek style and safety. Developing a sophisticated culture of safety came later to the game, but for the past 10 years or so, Cirrus has developed one that could be a model for many other companies. They're not the only one, true. But it shouldn't be a small club. Dale and Alan Klapmeier each brought a special world-class set of skills to their leadership at the company. Alan departed Cirrus years ago, and Dale remained to guide it to where it is today. His legacy will be lasting. And a big part of that record is the fact that Dale knows how to get things done. He's not alone in that. But here's the part that's extraordinary. He got things done while empowering his employees, who were always his colleagues, too, to be a part of the success. It was never about Dale winning. It was always about everyone winning. That's legacy.

8. Electrified: People are just now starting to say what I've been saying all along. Where are we going with electric flight? It's a hard question to ask because the hope for electric-powered flight is palpable. But the questions---how do we overcome the barriers to success!short battery life, sky-high weight-to-capacity ratios compared to fossil fuels, and the problem of working recharging into the model of aviation operations that's developed over the past century---are all impossible to answer today. They'll remain so until we find answers, and those answers won't be created by being more clever about how we work around the deficiencies, but by solving them. In this we're all captive to men and women working in labs around the world trying to figure out how to improve by orders of magnitude battery capacity and recharging performance. Until then, what we're doing has to be seen as some kind of very active wishful thinking. Don't get me wrong. I am not against that, working toward a destination even when the path there is still unknown. I just think we need to be honest with ourselves about where we are and prepare for a journey for which there are no charts available.

7. Night Airshow: The Night Airshow at AirVenture started as a curiosity and has become a centerpiece of the show. It's morphed over time. The acts are slicker and the effects have 10 times the "wow power." And the folks at EAA have figured out that the people who show up for the extravaganza, because that's what it's become, love the fireworks aspect of it. It's really a fireworks show with airplanes. And it is AWESOME. Everyone is talking about Wednesday night's "Ball of Fire" finale. No BS. If people were there, they're still talking about it. Here's my point. If you weren't there, go to Saturday's Night Airshow. Just go.

6. Airplane People: If you're here or have been here, you know that airplane people are different in about a dozen good ways than---how do I say it---people who aren't airplane people. Sure, the guys at the table next to us at the Italian joint last night spent a good deal of time talking about induction systems. When it comes to dinner conversations, how cool is that? So long as you're nuts about planes, that is. Which I am and you are, too. One difference is key. Airplane people are decent people. They're considerate of others. They care. They're involved. And they're kind. Of course there are exceptions, but for every jerk with an airplane you see at OSH, you'll meet a thousand amazing human beings. That's a huge part of this experience.

5. 7 A.M. Yodeling. One of the Oshkosh traditions, and I do not know who started it, is to say "good morning" to thousands of campers and early birds with a short yodeling session broadcast over the site-wide PA system at some volume. This is wrong. And some mornings after late nights, I am not a fan of whoever it is who's doing the deed. And perversely, I hope they never stop doing it. It's weird and fun. Oshkosh is generally not a weird part of the world, so let's hold on to all the oddball elements as long as we can.

4. Jelly Donuts: La Sure's Cakes and Café's jelly-filled sugar-dusted donuts might just be the best in the world. Donuts are not part of a healthy diet in general, but I make a La Sure's exception at OSH every year.

3. Proficiency: The EAA Pilot Proficiency Center is crushing it again this year. The organizations behind this big tent space committed to ensuring pilots are better at their craft after they leave Oshkosh work almost all year gearing up for the week of helping pilots hone their skills, and they don't do it because they're making big bucks. Quite the opposite. It's an expensive endeavor for them, not only in terms of dollars---Redbird Flight Simulations, along with EAA, are the most generous---but it's also a huge commitment in time. The CFIs who patiently provide the instruction are doing it for free. It's a glowing example of the best of aviation and the best of aviation people.

2. Year Of the Fighter: I'm not ashamed to say that when walking from one end of the show grounds to the other on Monday night, I choked up when I was surprised by an overflight of planes, four of them in formation. They were an A-10 Warthog, an F-22, an F-35 and one other plane passing by in incredibly tight formation. And that other airplane, the one leading the pack, was a P-51 Mustang. Thank you.

2A: Next Year? This is the 50^th Anniversary of EAA's show being in Oshkosh. Next year is the 51^st anniversary. Hmm! 51^st. I wonder if there's any good potential theme for next year's show.

1. EAA: This has been an absolutely incredible show, and I have to bring it to everyone's attention that it could have gone sideways early on after EAA was forced to greet hundreds of thousands of arrivals with soggy and muddy airplane, automobile, and camping grounds. It wasn't pretty for many of us who braved long lines to get where we were going, and Oshkosh turned away planes from far and wide for the first couple days of the show while the previous week's heavy rains soaked in and the earth dried out enough to accommodate the weight of Aerostars and Airstreams. It took a dedicated team effort on EAA's and its many, many partners, to pull it off. Hats off to them for crushing it, and to the attendees for their patience and tenacity in getting through those trials so we could all get to the good stuff. It's been a spectacular week.