Flight Innovation and Wine

06 July 2023 – Thursday

Today we visit the EAA museum and spend the night at Wine a Lot wine pub.

0847 46,613 66°F Leave Verona, WI

After a fun visit with our son and daughter-in-law we began wandering towards Maine.

0152 56,714 70°F Oshkosh, WI

Several friends have recommended visiting the Experimental Aircraft Association museum, so we stopped in.

They have an excellent museum with an extensive collection of historic experimental airplanes.

I’ll share just a few highlights.

The Space Ship One display was fascinating as the craft moved in synch with a movie explaining how it worked.

Pioneering surveying by aircraft, this Sikorsky S-38 flew to Brazil on a successful charting expedition for Johnson Wax in 1935.

The Rutan Voyager was the first aircraft to fly non-stop around the world without refueling. The museum has a cross-section model. The original is housed at the Air and Space Museum in Washington DC.

Burt and Dick Rutan were great experimenters and left some unique aircraft to the museum.

In 1965 Lesher Teal built this all aluminum single seat plane to set records for speed and distance in FAI closed course competitions. He broke several records and received four medals.

The biplane seaplane is a 1944 Grumman J2F “Duck.” The folding wing F4U-4 Corsair beside it is one of my favorite military aircraft.

In 1914 you could fly from Tampa to Saint Petersburg on this airboat.

Only 11 feet long with a wing span of 6 ft 3 inches, the homebuilt Stits “Baby Bird” established the record as the “World’s Smallest Airplane of Monoplane Configuration.”

A cross between an airplane and a helicopter, this Pitcairn PA-39 Autogiro was built for British military service. The factory price was $1,224.

This “Waco AR” was delivered to the NY Daily News in 1939. It stood out to me because windows on the passenger side were a larger size to accommodate photographers.

For those or you who wondered if a drone could be made big enough to carry a human, behold the “BlackFly V2.” The company is now called Pivotal, if you want to order one.

The Blackfly completed 10,000 hours of remote controlled flight before the first manned flight in 2018. Here are the specs:

Electric with eight motors
Electric Personal Aerial Vehicle
Vertical Take-off and landing
Fresh-water amphibious

Max speed 64 mph

In addition to the main building, several hangers contain vintage military aircraft.

This was just a taste of the 200+ planes in the EAA collection. It is well worth a visit for anyone with even a passing interest in aircraft.

Outside, pedal planes were set-up for young pilots to practice on the runway. If only I was a little shorter…

We said goodbye to the landing strip and hangers at the EAA. This field will look very different in a few weeks as it becomes the busiest airport on the planet. Over half a million people will descend upon this little airfield for AirVenture. If you click on the blue link, it will take you to a video, narrated by Harrison Ford, about this amazing annual event.