[Tim Hancock]

I got back from Oshkosh Thursday around noon. Monday night a bad storm with heavy rains passed thru from about 6:00 pm till about 12:30 am. Like an idiot I took the bus from the "south 40" up to theater in the woods to hear Mike Melville speak about Spaceship 1. Unfortunately the rain did not let up and I had to walk back most of the way in a driving rain with only a tiny umbrella. Eventually an EAA staffer in a leased new Mustang convertible pulled up and offered a ride. He ended up taking me all the way to my plane even driving/sliding thru the muddy lane to the south 40. I bet Ford will wish they had not provided all those new Ford vehicles for the EAA to trash in the mud!

Many campers awoke to several inches of rain IN their tents the next morning as all the low spots flooded (fortunately my plane and tent were on high ground and I stayed dry).

Glacier Girl, the P-38 rescued from it's ice grave was there and flew daily with a F-4, F-16 and P-51 for some formation passes. It was awesome! I also got to see White Knight carrying Space ship 1 land.
The round the world solo plane was there as well, it's long wings were noticably flexing as it made a couple low passes before landing.
The coolest Ultralight I saw was an all aluminum scaled down Ryan lookalike.

All in all it was a good year, allthough a few of the controllers there were obviously Oshkosh newbies as the plane I was following in turned final on 36 while we were supposed to be turning left downwind for 18 right and left. He proceeded about half way down on final before he realized his boo boo and peeled off to rejoin the 18 downwind. The controllers never saw it and believe it or not I saw two more instances of this later that day. One of these yahoos actually land on 36 left while two RV's on final for 18 right had to pull up and go around!

The controllers every other year have done a great job and typically tell you when to turn your downwind and base then clear you to land on the right or left runway. On this day they did not and some guys were flying east to the lake before turning while others were keeping it in tight which really lent to some bad spacing when finally being told to turn base. Oh well, for once the arrival was exciting!