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The United Kingdom has Farnborough and France has the Paris Air Show but,
despite the sheer number and quality of America airshows, there isn't a
world famous American airshow which is consider "the" one to attend.
In recent times there's been an effort to promote the annual EAA AirVenture
(otherwise known as the Oshkosh airshow) as the premier event on the American
calendar. However Oshkosh is limited by its historical
roots, and it's unlikely that AirVenture will ever achieve the status that
some people hope for. The show's name highlights its limitations
- it's organized and run by the EAA or "Experimental Aircraft Association",
which is primarily an umbrella organization for people for home-build their
planes. The push to have AirVenture recognized as America's
best airshow also comes from contributors to Flying magazine, which is
America's main magazine for private pilots.
It's no surprise, then, that the emphasis at Oshkosh is on homebuilt and
privately owned vintage aircraft, some of which you can see in this civil
aircraft highlights page. Burt Rutan and others keep the
dream of genuinely experimental aircraft alive, this year with a display
of a rocket-powered version of Rutan's unusually shaped Long-EZ plane;
Burt himself wasn't involved with this project, it was done by the company
XCOR as a preliminary stage in their attempt to win the Ansari X-Prize
to achieve civilian spaceflight. A significant section of each
AirVenture is devoted to aerobatics displays which is not surprising, considering
that the world's largest aerobatic organization, the International Aerobatic
Club, is a division of the EAA. However, military aircraft,
the bread and butter of other airshows, are given a smaller part of the
programme at AirVenture. Even this is nothing to be sneezed
at - there's a good enough selection of World War Two military aircraft
to keep me coming back year after year, as this World
War Two aircraft highlights page demonstrates.
However,
the AirVenture website won't tell you the list of military aircraft expected
to attend, and some of the warbird pilots I spoke to were annoyed by the
lack of support they received from the organizers. Modern military
aircraft get very little attention - there's usually a marine corps AV-8B
Harrier doing its ear-splitting routine, but that's about it.
During a slow section of the programme in 2002 there was a casual announcement
that at 11 o'clock the next day a B-2 Spirit "stealth bomber" would
do a display. Forewarned, I was one of the few people ready
when the B-2 arrived and made several passes. At least it was
better than 2001, when an F-18
Hornet took off and was only announced after it was gone!
Since there aren't that many present-day military aircraft at the show,
I've combined modern military aircraft with some Vietnam era planes in
the post World War Two aircraft highlights
page. |
