The plane, colourful truth about Oshkosh
For one week every summer, it’s home to the world’s busiest airport
For seven days every summer, the airport at Oshkosh, Wis., becomes the busiest and most colourful in the world, host of an annual extravaganza like no other.
Picture 10,000 aircraft and 500,000 people. The control tower at Wittman Regional Airport has so many planes to deal with, aircraft entering the control zone don’t speak on the radio unless necessary — instead, they just rock their wings in acknowledgment of instructions from the air traffic controllers.
But if you are a pilot, an aircraft owner or a simple aviation addict, Oshkosh is Mecca. And we are going to worship. Neither my travelling companion — Geoff Grenville, a professional photographer — nor I have been before.
The route from our tiny airfield east of Hamilton at Grimsby, Ont., will take us just under the floor of Chicago O’Hare’s insanely congested airspace. And then, 100 nautical miles later, on to Oshkosh which, for one week every July, boasts the busiest control tower in the world.
Our plane is the Cessna 172, the ubiquitous four- seater that has taught legions of airline captains how to fly.
Today, with a headwind, it is travelling a painfully slow 85 knots, necessitating a fuel stop at Lansing, Mich., where we clear U. S. Customs, just shy of the halfway mark of our journey’s nearly 1,000 kilometres.
We are through Chicago without incident, the controllers not as harried as I feared, and 45 minutes later, the approach procedure into Wittman Regional begins.
Half a mile southwest of Fisk, Wis., I hear the controller call: “Canadian blue- and- white Cessna, rock your wings if you can hear me.”
I turn the control column left and right, causing the ailerons to move the wings up and down.
“Very nice wing rock, sir. Continue northeast along the railway tracks, prepare for runway 27, and now monitor tower frequency 118.5.”
Soon the airport and runway are in view. I run the pre- landing checklist and toggle flaps down 20 degrees.
“Canadian blue- and- white Cessna, begin your base- to- final turn now. Aim for the orange dot.”
There are three giant dots along the 5,600- foot length of runway 27 — orange, then green, then white. I aim for orange, knowing the controller will land another airplane in an approach path slightly above me to hit the green dot, and possibly another after it to hit the white.
My landing is embarrassingly poor. But we’re down and we’re safe. We angle off the runway into the grass, as directed, finally brought to a stop in the midst of a sea of other small aircraft.
As I pitch our tent I watch an Airbus A350 buzz the airfield like a giant fighter jet. The sensation is that of a kid at Christmas.
The next day we listen to the son of Gary Powers, the U2 spy- plane pilot who was shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960. Later, we watch stunt pilots perform manoeuvres that leave our jaws agape.
We drop by the booths of a headset manufacturer, navigation software providers and, after some souvenir shopping, attend a reception for Canadian pilots put on by the Canadian Owners & Pilots Association.
Later that night we watch an aviation themed movie at a giant outdoor cinema. Fireflies dance across the screen. I try to make sense of it all, grapple with what makes it such a marvel, such an attraction.
The beginning of an answer comes on the rooftop patio of a nearby hotel, where we’ve gone for beers with Rob, our new nextdoor neighbour, an Irish pilot from London. He has just flown his fourseat Piper Arrow across the Atlantic Ocean from Scotland to be here. Like us, it is his first time.
“So many aviation geeks together,” Rob says. “It’s ... nice.”
I know a pilot who worked in an office tower in downtown Toronto. Her desk faced out over the lake and every day she would watch airplanes come and go from the city’s island airport.
She eventually quit her office job, which paid more than $ 100,000 a year, to become a flight instructor, which paid $ 25,000.
“I loved the magic of it,” she told me. “There was no magic in that office tower.”
Oshkosh brings aviators together. It’s an opportunity to be among one’s tribe, among the ones who marvel at the magic, when a simple principle of physics lifts a giant hunk of metal and people off the ground and allows them to soar into the blue sky.