PHILIP GREENSPUN: There is no pizza for me
because I'm going to talk about Oshkosh.
So what is it?
It's end of July every year at a big, a physically big,
but otherwise not very busy airport in Wisconsin.
And about 10,000 airplanes come in.
People camp out.
People hang out, usually at least 100,000 people a day.
There's a Boeing.
There's a C-17 cargo plane.
A lot of experimental-- it's founded by the Experimental
Aircraft Association.
So there's a lot of people who are
passionate about home-building there.
You can see all the airplanes parked.
There's 12,000 camping sites, 40,000 campers.
There's 1,500 workshops and seminars
that you can take to learn.
Or you can just walk around and talk to people, and hang out.
So I planned this trip for me and my friend Ray.
He's a helicopter pilot from Ireland.
And the idea was to fly to Niagara Falls
and show him Niagara Falls, and on the way
back go up to Mackinac Island.
They saw automobiles about 120 years ago and they said,
this is a terrible technology.
It'll ruin everything.
They banned cars.
The only powered air--
the only powered vehicle you can legally have on Mackinac Island
is an aircraft.
They do have an airport.
Anyway, on the back, we were going to go to Toronto as well.
So we had to get all this stuff ready for international flying.
I had it all carefully planned out
where we were going to have 540 pounds of stuff,
which is right at the payload of the airplane with full fuel.
But then Oxana, who was just here--
she's an aerobatic pilot at East Coast Aero Club-- she
said she wanted to come too.
So then we had to add a fuel stop.
There's our merry band of three people.
There's a whole bunch of camping gear in the back
that you can't quite see.
Oshkosh becomes temporarily the busiest airport in the world.
And you might say, well, how can that be?
O'Hare has more flights.
But they are only--
Oshkosh is only open about 10 hours a day
because they close the airport at night.
And they close it also for a few hours every afternoon
for an airshow.
This is somebody's iPad, I think, a screen capture
of airplanes flying in and around Oshkosh.
And these are only the ones with the newest
ADS-B out transponders.
So it doesn't show, probably--
this is probably only 20% of the total airplanes.
You have special arrival rules.
If you're not a sissy, then you have
to fly in visually, circle around until it's your turn.
And then they'll tell you you can't use the whole runway.
You have to land on one of these dots.
They'll say, land on the green dot.
If you are a sissy, you file IFR, get your IFR reservation
with this DOS grade computer system,
confirm it with this DOS grade computer system
that nobody else wants to deal with,
and then you get the whole runway, and you just land.
All right.
Here's a picture of the multifunction display.
No, actually, I guess this was in FlightAware later.
This shows that we diverted a bit.
From Bedford, we ended up going up to Watertown, New York,
so we didn't--
we could have-- legally, we're instrument rated
and everything.
We could have flown through these rain showers.
But it's always smarter just to go around if you can.
OK.
So we flew over Niagara Falls.
We landed.
We had that whole runway to ourself,
about 10,000-foot runway.
And it's actually oriented east-west.
So we actually just--
essentially, we could have done the same heading basically
from Hanscom Field all the way to the end of the runway
and where we turned off.
You get there.
And there's just--
I don't know-- 30 P-51 Mustangs right next to your tent.
There are people building this One Week Wonder, an RV kit,
where you get to pull rivets.
Oxana is actually here.
And she can tell you about her experience
helping to build that airplane.
There you see your B1 bomber.
I love the antiques.
Here's one from the late '20s, a Lincoln-Page airplane that
has been recently restored and flying.
There's that replica autogyro, a beautiful Cessna 170.
That's an old Piper Comanche there on the right.
There's not a whole lot of helicopter action.
There's a little bit.
This is what's called a Safari Helicopter Kit.
That's how you know that you have
real confidence in your mechanical abilities
if you build and then fly your own helicopter.
Piper Cub.
This is a guy who stuck a Pratt and Whitney--
I think it's a Pratt--
PT6 engine into a Polish Wilga, a short field landing airplane.
He added fuel tanks.
It's such a fuel hog now that he had
to add extra fuel capacity in the struts
and flies all around the west, going camping with his family.
All right.
And that's called a Travel Air.
There are a bunch of these.
So these are airplanes from the '20s.
People were just using them for transportation,
throwing a friend in the back maybe and a tent
and going and camping out at Oshkosh.
So I think that's pretty cool.
There are only five of these Piaggio seaplanes, P136s,
that still exist out of 63 that were built from 1948 to 1961.
I saw two of them parked next to each other at Oshkosh.
That's what makes it a unique experience.
Here's some kind of airplane doing a simulated bombing run.
Meanwhile, a family is there in their personal DC-3
camping out.
Here's our little plane and the $99 tent from Costco.
It seemed like a great idea at the time.
I think we have a slide on that.
OK.
This kind of summarizes it.
This is the unfortunate state of general aviation now.
So we have the innovation showcase.
And right in front of it, a Piper Seminole, which I think
was certified in the 1970s and certainly a derivative
of things going back a lot farther than that.
There were some interesting talks there,
some heavy hitters.
This guy Pat Anderson is a professor at Embry-Riddle.
And he said actually that we haven't really
seen anything in the electric aircraft world
because in the early days of jets,
they just took these piston airframes and stuck a jet
engine in them.
And they didn't perform that differently
from the piston fighters.
But then five years later, they had the swept wings
and what we would recognize as the modern fighter jet.
So it completely-- it was the jet
engine did completely transform the aircraft,
but not immediately.
So he said, you're seeing some of this now,
where people take a little two-seat trainer
and they remove the piston engine
and put an electric motor with the propeller.
But that's not really--
what we're really going to see are things
that are much more like drones.
There is an Uber.
There was a guy from Uber that was very interesting.
Uber has aeronautical engineers working for them,
designing aircraft, and then releasing the designs for free,
hoping that people will make them.
They're claiming that they're going to--
I don't know.
They've got to pay somebody off in the government
to make this happen.
2023 they say they're going to be operating in Los Angeles.
Their idea is that the world is going
to be so congested that people will pay up happily
to hop over the congestion in relatively short hops.
So Uber is putting a lot of money into this.
They have some partners like Airbus, Pipistrel,
the Slovenian company.
We'll see what happens.
So some round-the-world pilots were there.
Actually, I don't know how many you guys know this, but Matt
Guthmiller, who was an MIT--
between freshman and sophomore years
became the youngest person ever to fly around
the world in a Beechcraft Bonanza.
I mean, he was in a Beechcraft Bonanza
and he was the youngest person to fly around the world.
But there's also-- at Oshkosh, we met this guy
Dick Rutan who flew around the world non-stop unrefueled
in a plane designed by his brother Burt Rutan.
What else is Burt Rutan famous for besides designing aircraft?
Does anybody know?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
PHILIP GREENSPUN: What?
AUDIENCE: Wasn't he on like a spacecraft?
PHILIP GREENSPUN: Spacecraft, that's true.
But yeah, spacecraft and aircraft, but what else?
AUDIENCE: Canard planes.
PHILIP GREENSPUN: Canard planes, those are airplanes.
Climate change denial.
Look it up.
He's got like a 100-page book about the scientific fraud
of climate change.
But anyway, Dick Rutan.
And the other interesting thing is before this nine-day flight,
he was engaged to be married to Jeana Yeager
and supposedly what I heard at Oshkosh
was that they have not spoken since they landed in 1986.
So in nine days, there can be quite a change
in a relationship apparently.
We met this pilot Shaesta Waiz.
I don't know if that's the correct pronunciation.
She grew up in California and learned
to fly relatively recently.
And she also flew a Bonanza all the way
around the world over 145 days.
So that was interesting.
She actually said it gets a little bit easier once you're
out over the ocean from a weather point of view.
She said except for the Intertropical Convergence
of the Equator, most weather is kind
of a phenomenon of being over land.
To me, the most impressive round the world pilot,
though, was actually an Italian guy that I met.
He was in a Cirrus SR22.
And he just flies to Oshkosh every year.
He just loads up in Italy, turns the key, and goes.
Every year, flies over the Atlantic, and then
flies back to Italy when it's over.
So I thought that is actually the coolest thing, when
it's not even an adventure.
You're not going to write about it.
You're not going to build a web page.
You're not going to say you're changing the world
or helping to achieve something.
You're not going to set a record.
You're just using your airplane for transportation.
You want to get to Oshkosh.
You have an airplane.
So why should the fact that you're on a different continent
stop you from doing it?
A lot of people have stopped doing home projects, home
repairs.
So Oshkosh, they actually have people that teach kids
how to hammer, how to drill, how to cut sheet metal.
There's a lot of great workshops there for kids.
We were over by the Pioneer Airport and the Museum.
Here is the museum.
They have a replica Wright Flyer, a whole area
devoted to the Rutan designs.
I don't know how many--
I don't know how many of you know the MIT spinoff
Terrafugia.
I guess-- I think it was 12-- at least 12 years ago,
they said they were going to build a flying car.
So I took a picture of this 1949 Taylor Aerocar, which
is actually a certificated flying car
and unfairly associated with Terrafugia.
So this guy is kind of an inspiration, I think--
Paul Poberezny, the founder of the Experimental Aircraft
Association.
He flew the most expensive and highest-performance aircraft
of the day.
He flew the P-51 Mustang, the P-38 Lightning.
And then he came home and said, well,
what's cool to do after flying a 12,000-pound-plus P-51 Mustang?
Why not just go to the basement, get some plywood,
nail it together, and build a really crummy plywood airplane?
And that's what he did.
So it just shows the joy.
You don't have to have a high-performance, state
of the art airplane.
If you build it yourself or you're goofing around,
you can have fun.
And he did.
And he was a better pilot than [INAUDIBLE],,
I'm sure, in his P-51.
So that made me think maybe we shouldn't be snobby about these
home-built airplanes, because if it was good enough--
Poberezny had fun with it.
All right.
So here's some examples of home-builts.
Up on the left there, there's some kind of canard velocity.
These folks spent 15 years building this helicopter.
And they had about 40 hours of flight time on it.
So to me, in a good month at a flight school,
a Robinson helicopter might fly 90 hours or 100 hours
in just a month.
So it's taken them 15 years plus to get to where a flight
school would get in a month.
But that's kind of not the point.
It's not about efficiency apparently.
That's Rotorway kit, I bet.
And they modified it by sticking in a little tiny turbine
engine.
This is another modification.
This is an old Rutan design that became the Berkut
with a big piston engine.
This guy stuck a turbo jet engine in it.
Here's the company-- yeah, 42,000--
I think that doesn't include the engine, which is under 50.
You can build your own little single-seat jet.
Cirrus was there.
Cirrus actually has been kind of an industry-changing company.
It didn't seem that way at the time,
because it's very similar in performance
to Mooneys and Pipers, and Cessnas.
But they really have revolutionized the way
that families buy airplanes now.
And they've got over 7,000 of them.
The parachute is, I think, critical to getting
modern people to accept this design.
And also the glass cockpit does make life easier.
Although, everybody else has caught up there.
Here's the Icon A5.
They have the same booth every year.
A huge amount of excitement.
People love it.
A lot of people have ordered it.
They haven't figured out how to build it.
The price has gone up to the point where
you can almost by a Cessna Caravan on floats with a jet
engine for the same price.
Here is a retired Air Force and Southwest Airlines
pilot with his electric self-launching Pipistrel
glider.
Pipistrel is the company to watch.
They do a lot of interesting stuff
in Slovenia, especially with electrics.
This is not the kind of radar picture
you want to see when you're in a $99 tent.
I will say to Costco that it did hold up remarkably well.
But it was scary.
The seaplane base a few miles away from Oshkosh.
They have the Oshkosh seaplane base.
I think it's on Lake Winnebago.
So you take a shuttle bus or you drive over there
if you have a rental car.
So you'll see-- they call it the quiet part of Oshkosh.
It's quiet because you only hear about three or four aircraft
engines running at any one time and maybe two
takeoffs or landings.
They have four hangars, vendors.
If you want to take your dog in an unpressurized airplane up
to 18,000 feet, you can buy this kit.
I don't know what our golden retriever would say about that.
There's affinity groups for different slices.
Here's a woman who just like-- just for female pilots
to Mooneys.
Air shows every day.
My favorite acts actually were--
I did like the GameBird.
That was cool.
But I also liked these first two were
kind of regular family airplanes just
being pushed to their limits.
It wouldn't be legal just to go out and do that in a Baron,
because you can't do acrobatics.
But he'll put it into experimental category,
and then just fly it right up to the G limits
for which it was designed.
And it's amazing to see what these ordinary family
or business airplanes can do when pushed.
There were-- one thing that's interesting,
about 150 Beechcraft aerobatic Bonanzas were built.
They were strengthened.
And it is legal to do aerobatics in your four-seat Bonanza.
Night airshow.
I guess that's worth showing.
It is so unusual.
They had explosives and fireworks mounted on aircraft.
They fly around at night, shooting fireworks off.
I guess you may have to view that on your own,
which isn't so bad.
A lot of warbirds.
Everything from World War II is still
flying pretty much at Oshkosh.
That Grumman Tigercat on the right,
I'd never even heard of that airplane
until I saw it at Oshkosh.
That's-- I think this is EAA's own B-17,
which they fly around and sell rides in and stuff.
Oh, and up on the top right is a flying 1/3 Scale B-17
that some crazy guy spent 15 years building or more.
That's EAA.
Also, they have a B-29.
Up there at the top right is my friend Eric with his personal--
I guess he's in the foundation with a few other people,
but essentially a personal DC-3.
Oh, and he's flying that to Europe
this year for the 50th Anniversary of D-day.
Is it the 50th?
No, it can't be.
AUDIENCE: 75th.
PHILIP GREENSPUN: What?
75th.
Sorry.
Thank you.
I was a math undergrad.
Good illustration of the value of a Course 18 degree.
And actually, when I was an undergrad,
people said, how will you ever get
a job if you're a math major?
The engineers all said that.
Well, we said, well, we can become actuaries.
We can become actuaries.
There was a group of folks who were passionate about warbirds
down in the south.
And they called their organization
the Confederate Air Force.
Well, they've had to change that now.
Now they're the Commemorative Air Force.
And they're big into--
they brought the Tuskegee Airmen,
some of the remaining P-51 guys from World War II there.
I gave a talk with NOAA.
That's Kate from NOAA trying to get volunteer pilots to fly sea
turtles back from Cape Cod and other northern places
to Florida.
Sunday morning, it was time to leave.
For me, I saw 30% of what we'd hoped to see
and 1% of what there was to see.
As you can see from the right, that One Week Wonder's
coming together.
It actually did fly, I believe, on Sunday.
So they got it built in seven or eight days.
We went to Mackinac Island, beautiful place up
near the Canadian border.
Everything's horse-drawn or a bicycle.
A fun place to go in the airplane.
We went and landed in the Toronto City Island
Airport, which is right in front of the downtown.
We had Chinese food, saw the aquarium,
landed back in Bedford.
So we burned off 15 hours of Hobbs time.
Split by three people, that wouldn't be too horrible.
It was about $3,000 at retail.
Next year, I think it might be time to go JetBlue.
So the summary is that even as the regulation
has made light aircraft almost as expensive to operate
commercially at least or for charter as the big aircraft,
but Oshkosh keeps growing every year.
More people are passionate about it.
So what you're seeing in the aircraft world
is like the very high end and the very low end
are kind of prospering.
This is Oxana's thing.
She asked everybody like, what brings you to Oshkosh?
And they always said, the people,
I love talking to the people here.
And I feel that way, too.
People go year after year.
There's a whole bunch of links here in the presentation.
And finally, what I like most about it is--
and the reason I'm going back, I think, is it's my safe space.
Outside of this room if I tell people
I like to go over to Hanscom Field
and fly this little four-seat airplane with a piston engine,
they're horrified.
They think that that's just so dumb.
You could just drive in New York in your Honda.
You could get a ticket on JetBlue for no money.
Like why would you do that?
It's dumb.
But Oshkosh is the one place where nobody will say that.