One new activity we did this year was the outdoor theatre. They have a large inflatable screen at the bottom of a small hill near the campground. Everyone brings lawn chairs or blankets and watches the movie from the grass, 3000 people or so I would guess. All movies are aviation related and we saw Broken Arrow on Friday night and Memphis Belle on Saturday night. John Travolta talked for 30 minutes or so before his movie and spoke of his flying experiences and love of aviation. He flew his personal B727 to Oshkosh, not a bad ride.
One of the pilots that flew a B-17 for the Belle movie also talked about his experiences flying the old warbirds. All of the original pilots are now well in to their 80's, so it is up to younger pilots to keep them in the air so we can remember the sacrifices made during the war.
On Saturday during the airshow Tanner and I went to meet up with my friend Mike. He has purchased an L-39 Albatross tandem seat jet trainer that was made in the Cech Republic. It is a high performace aircraft and is imported and refurbished by Pride Aviation in Rockford, IL.
Mike introduced me to his instructor pilot Buck W who told me what it was like to fly the L-39. Buck was a former A-10 Warthog driver for the Air Force during Desert Storm and currently flies 757's/767's for an airline out of Chicago. Instructing in the L-39 is his weekend job, not a bad sideline gig in my opinion. Coincidently, he is also building a Van's Aircraft, an RV-8. A side by side like my -7 wouldn't cut it for a fighter pilot I guess.
Tanner was able to sit in the front seat of the cockpit and Mike showed him all the controls and interesting stuff. Tanner thought it was cool and was lucky to get that opportunity.
We had a fun trip to Oshkosh and there were no accidents while we were there. It was great to see Jim and Jack.
