Airventure 2009

In April of 2000, my friend Eric and I attended a workshop for hints and skills to build my plane, a Sonex. It was there we decided to fly to Airventure when I finally finished my plane. Airventure is the largest fly-in in the United States and might even be the largest in the world. Having taken the long road to finish my Sonex via a master's degree, a move and trying to save money to buy the things I needed, I finally finished my plane last October. "Finished" is a loose term, as it is unpainted/unpolished and still needs some detail work.
Eric flew out to South Carolina from California a couple of days before we were to leave to meet up with a couple of buddies and fly as a group of 3 planes. My Electronic Flight Instrument System (EFIS)had taken a dump 2 months earlier and I finally got it back the same day that Eric arrived.
We installed it that night and test flew it after I got off work the next day (Thursday). Everything seemed to be OK.
We left on Friday to fly to Clarksville, Tennessee to meet up with Robert and Frank, but stopped in Crossville to have lunch with another friend John.
The weather was not looking too good on Saturday, so Robert and Frank decided to drive. Eric and I felt that with the speed of the 3300, we could make the narrow window between two weather systems before they closed so we took off at 6am. Weather was not bad, although we did have to fly over some clouds. The ceiling was not too good at Rantoul, IL, but it was scattered enough to be able to land without difficulty. I called another friend Dan, who was planning on meeting us along the way, and he was still stuck in Columbus, Indiana with rain, so we left to face the traffic at Oshkosh alone.
The clouds were all gone as we got about 70 miles North of Rantoul. It was smooth flying to Juneau, WI for fuel in case we needed to hold over one of the lakes. Fortunately there was little traffic and we had become pretty familiar with the arrival procedures over the last few days.
Following a much slower plane, we were told to speed up on final and the plane behind us (a WWII fighter) was asked to slow down if possible. I landed on the dot after getting beat up on a bumpy windy final and got the hell out of the way. In Oshkosh, you can't really tell what the wind is doing as all the wind socks get blown away on a normal day as a blustery day is considered calm there.

We taxiied all over the place and finally arrived at Sonex where Jeremy said we should go over to Sonex Homebuilt parking and we would all taxi over together in the morning for the open house. He was able to lead us in his car which saved about a quarter million miles of taxiing.

We had an absolute blast. Neither of us had been to Airventure before, and we saw less than 1/10 of what was there. We might have seen as much as 1/8 of what was there, but I spent too much time talking about my little rat-rod airplane.

After 4 days there, looking at the weather, we decided to leave a day early. I didn't want to go home yet as there was too much to see and do, but to be able to get home in time to get Eric back on the plane to California was necessary.
We were number 3 to depart Wednesday morning at 6AM and it was absolutely beautiful flying until a bit South of Chicago.

Not too far from Chicago, we ran into more clouds, but the wind was behind us and we were making pretty good time.
Looking for holes in the clouds, made the arrival at Grissom, Indiana a little edgy, but once we got down through the hole, it was business as usual.

I called John to see how things looked at Crossville and in Spartanburg, and of course there was some rain, but it looked like it would be gone by the time we got there.
It had just finished raining when we got to Crossville and had lunch again with John to kill some time while we waited for weather to clear at home.
Heading South over the Blue Ridge mountains, we had to go to about 10,500ft (3200 meters for those of you who don't do feet) to clear the clouds, and when we turned East, and going slightly down hill with a tailwind groundspeed was between 180 and 200mph for the last 90 miles. That was way COOL!
Total time for the trip was 13.1 hours (including taxi time) and I'm still smiling.
It was nice to see old friends and meet some new ones who are all there for the same reason. We like airplanes!

We had the best time on this trip, and I hope we can do it again.