Sean and I flew a Cessna 172 from Denver to Oshkosh, Nebraska — and then Oshkosh, Wisconsin — in July for EAA AirVenture. It was nuts.  It was fun!

It wasn’t supposed to be done in a 172 at all, but rather a Diamond DA-40. However, while pre-flighting the plane a few days before the trip, I discovered a delamination in the prop, grounding the plane for repairs. Fortunately, Sean had the foresight to reserve a 172 with a different flying club. After a last-minute checkout for me with that club so I could also legitimately be at the controls, we set off into the sky. We would be slower than expected, but better a slow bird than one threatening to shed part of its propeller.

The bird for our journey, N6338D

The defining flight condition for the eastbound trip was smoke. Northern Minnesota and a giant swath of Canada was on fire, which pushed the flight visibility down to during parts of the trek down to nearly instrument conditions. In fact, Oshkosh itself had been IFR most of the day before we arrived, went IFR again a few hours after we arrived, and was IFR most of the day after we arrived. Since IFR arrivals and departures are severely rate-limited during AirVenture, pretty much all of the 10,000 or so planes that fly in must do so VFR. That meant a mad rush to get in during the brief periods the field wasn’t IFR. We lucked out; nobody was ahead of or behind us for miles during our transit of the Fisk Arrival, and by the time things were getting spicy, we were safely on the ground.

Sean flying a leg with scattered clouds below, before the smoke got really bad

No pilot can resist stopping what they’re doing to watch an airplane land. When multiple craft are coming in per minute, and when stress is high, ATC instructions are sometimes contradictory, compliance is iffy, and winds aren’t exactly favorable, the entertainment factor is high. In some ways, it’s like watching racing as a racer: nobody wants to see any machines get damaged or people get hurt, and you can relate to the person at the controls in the cockpit, but it’s more exciting when things go just a little wrong. We saw plenty of sketchy approaches, bounced landings, and at least one prop strike, first from under our wing parked in the North 40 at the airport, and then from the roof of a nearby hotel.

In contrast to the chaos of the main airfield, the seaplane base for AirVenture was just as chill as advertised. Perched on the shore of Lake Winnebago at the end of a short trail walk through the woods, we found an opening filled with people sitting around campfires and lounging in the shade on numerous Adirondack chairs. Seaplanes were leisurely bobbing in the water next to docks. I might admit to snoozing at least a tiny bit while watching seaplanes come and go; it was great.

At the seaplane base

The next few days went by quickly. Air shows were watched. Aviation exhibits were visited. And quirky locals were encountered at neighborhood bars and restaurants, including Sean trying to convince one Oshkoshian that the world really is round. It was soon time for our return trip to Colorado, loaded up with as much Spotted Cow as we could take within weight and CG limits.

We departed Oshkosh IFR, which we justified partially because there were in fact some scattered low clouds on our route, and partially because we’d been lucky enough to actually get one of the rare IFR departure reservations. As it turned out, the smoke was bad enough upon our arrival for a stop in Minneapolis that we ended up shooting an instrument approach to the Flying Cloud Airport due to necessity rather than discretion.

Flying!

Along the way, a resolutely uncertain pilot flying VFR repeatedly asked Minneapolis Center if some MOA in Wisconsin was active. (This despite the question being somewhat moot: VFR flights don’t have any obligation to avoid active MOAs.) The Center controller calmly explained that no, the MOA was not active, and that in fact they deliberately keep that MOA cold during the week of Airventure. The pilot acknowledged hearing Center’s response, but apparently unsatisfied with the controller’s answer, the pilot then repeated basically the same question. The controller gave basically the same response. Then the pilot did it again, at which point the controller said, “I really don’t know how else to tell you that the MOA is cold.” The pilot then diverted around the MOA anyway. A few minutes later, another pilot in a different plane piped up, “Center, is that MOA hot”? No response came from Center, so after a beat, the pilot spoke again: “That was a joke.” Center then immediately acknowledged with a laugh.

From Flying Cloud, we continued across South Dakota so as to avoid convective weather in Nebraska.

While we were in some benign clouds west of Pierre, the battery-charge ammeter started acting oddly, sometimes showing an implausibly high charge current, sometimes showing a normal current, and sometimes rapidly slewing between those states. The plane was flying fine, and everything electrical seemed to be correct, so after some extensive troubleshooting, we decided it must be a bad sensor. Still, warry of the possibility there was actually a real problem, we kept rapt focus on the airplane’s systems all the way to Rapid City.

At KRAP, we were happy to find that they had an A&P (mechanic) on staff and able to immediately look at our plane. It took some effort for him to reproduce the problem, and even longer to fix it — foiled by a first attempted replacement part, an “ACU”, turning out to be bad new out of the box — but we were grateful that he was willing to set everything else aside to help us. By the time the plane was repaired, the weather had turned in Denver, and we would have been arriving well after nightfall, so we decided to do a local test flight around Mt. Rushmore, spend the night in Rapid, and proceed onward in the morning.

Flying around Mt. Rushmore

Morning dawned rainy, misty, and with low ceilings, so we departed IFR and entered the clouds at about 600 ft AGL. A couple thousand feet higher, we popped out above the clouds, and from there it was an uneventful trip back to Denver.