I have thought of a permanent motto for Oshkosh Airventure. EAA comes up with a new one for each year. This year there were two, "year of the fighter" which turned out to be apt, and "50th fly-in at Oshkosh." (The latter confused the people on the loudspeakers, who kept calling it the "50th anniversary at Oshkosh," which it wasn't. The 50th anniversary will be next year, when the 51st fly-in is held. That's how anniversaries work.) EAA sometimes seems to try to come up with a motto that works year after year, but nothing it tries ever seems to stick, probably because they're thought up by marketing people who don't know which end of a VariEze is the front.
After hearing variations of this said 50 times every day at every Oshkosh I've been to, I think Oshkosh's permanent slogan should be:
"WOW, I'VE NEVER SEEN THAT BEFORE."
To me that's the essence of Oshkosh. You're constantly seeing things you can see nowhere else, even at another year's Oshkosh.
The expletive at the front can be adjusted from "Wow" to "D--n" to "S--t" to "F--k" depending on how special the thing is, and where you fall on the uptightness spectrum where 0 = Ricky Gervais and 100 = Mike Pence. This year's Mustang gathering definitely earned one of the two higher-level expletives. This will be the first of a few "I've never seen that before" posts.
We all know that the Blue Angels and Thunderbirds made brief cameo appearances this year, but not as many people detected the Snowbird presence. This has to be the first year that all three major North American military display teams made UNSCHEDULED Oshkosh appearances.
When this plane beat up the runway and settled into the pattern Thursday afternoon, I remarked to my neighbor that some private owner must have painted his Tutor in Snowbird markings. But as it landed and taxied in, it was clearly the real deal. The Snowbirds had sent one plane, Tutor 114145, with no position number on the tail. The crew chief displayed what by Canadian standards is unseemly, over-the-top patriotism as they taxied in.
Rather than taxi to where the U.S. military hardware was parked, or even to the warbird area, they set up the tutor in the Vintage parking area. Admittedly, given the age of the Snowbird Tutors, that was appropriate. They then dutifully filled out their DON'T TOUCH ME information card like any other vintage owner, listing "Royal Canadian Air Force Air Demonstration Sqn 431 Snowbirds, Moose Jaw, Sask." as the owner of their 1965 CT-114, and pitched their tents beside the plane! They spent much of the day hanging around the plane talking to whoever wanted to know about it.
And they were custom Snowbird tents, at that. As a Canadian, I'm not sure how I feel about that. I mean, the custom tents are cool, but do the Snowbirds really camp out beside their planes often enough to justify those?
Anyway, darn, I've never seen that before.
If you want to understand the difference between Canadian and U.S. attitudes in a nutshell, there it is. Canada can have its premier air force display pilots, the equal of any in the world in flying ability and professionalism, camp out beside their planes at a fly-in like Aeronca Champ owners and emerge in their skivvies in the morning without bringing shame on the nation. In fact, it's kind of awesome.
Word on the field was that they were going to do a special solo routine at one of the airshows, but they didn't on Thursday or Friday. Maybe someone knows if they did one on the weekend. That would have been another thing I've never seen.
August
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