EAA AirVenture 2017

Every year a significant portion of the aviation community travels to Oshkosh, Wis., for the annual pilgrimage to the Experimental Aircraft Assoc., fly-in called AirVenture. For those who regularly attend, this is an opportunity to meet old friends, learn about building or maintenance techniques and to get caught up on the latest in aircraft technology – from components to complete aircraft. For the uninitiated, AirVenture is like drinking from a fire hose – too many things to do and see making it difficult to focus and prioritize.

This year was no different with over 10,000 aircraft parked on the field and many more scattered to surrounding fields simply because there was not more room. The Vintage Aircraft Assoc. had more than doubled their parking spaces and over 1,000 vintage aircraft showed up to fill it. The homebuilts were well represented with 100s of RVs and 10s of Lancairs, Glassairs and others. Crowd attendance was up with the Friday and Saturday shows being record breakers – read that wall-to-wall, or maybe that should be plane-to-plane, people. Official attendance records show that 590,000 people attended the seven-day event and over 17,224 aircraft movements recorded for the 10 days making it the busiest airport in the world during that period. Even Camp Scholler (the camping) area was at maximum capacity with the EAA quickly opening additional space – a first ever for this area.

On the innovative side one of the interesting developments that caught our eye was the latest in helicopter design. Still in the development stages and yet to fly, a number of companies are working on these. There was one, two-passenger model, the SureFly developed by Workhorse Group of Loveland, Ohio, on display. This “quadcopter” design is powered by eight electric motors driving counter-rotating props on four arms – electrical power comes from two 100kW generators powered by a single . . .