I got there about 1:30pm on Thursday, stayed on the EAA grounds in Audrey's Park, and left at 11:00am today. Overall I felt it was a pretty weak turnout of display aircraft this year in all categories, at least that's how it appeared from Thursday on. EAA claims aircraft attendance was way up in all categories but I'm not buying it. Other than the TORA! TORA! TORA! routine, the Grumman Wildcat aerobatic performance, and Jet Waco I thought the daily airshows were really lame this year. They even stuffed an R/C demo right into the middle of the main airshow on Friday, at
OSHKOSH. Really? That one about took the cake, at least it left a nice opportunity to go fetch a bottle of water.
About 9-9:30 this morning I rode the shuttle through the entire grounds, end to end, and it was basically a ghost town. There were very few aircraft left, display or fly-in attendee types. Out of what
was left the departures were steadily flowing down the main runway and had been since early morning. A lot of the corporate displays were already in the process of being dismantled as well. It was like the circus had left town. I had originally planned on staying through the end of the Sunday airshow but nothing was going to happen that I hadn't already seen since Thursday, just a bunch of re-runs. Seeing and realizing all of this I stopped and had a couple pancakes at the "Machine Shed" quanset next to the Vintage hangar while watching some departures, and then hit the road for home shortly after.
One thing is for sure, if you haven't ever done OSH and are considering going, don't waste your time (and money) going on the final Sunday.