Trip to Oshkosh

If you are in the flying community you know about the annual Oshkosh air show in Wisconsin not far from Milwaukee. This is the Mecca for anyone in love with airplanes and flying. It encompasses all the different categories; homebuilt (called experimental), antique, ultra-light, Military, etc. Thousands of airplanes and enthusiasts gather for this week long extravaganza. I’ve attended the air show on two occasions. The first was on my way home to Oklahoma after leaving the Air Force. My last station was Grand Forks, ND so I made a slight detour to attend the Oshkosh air show. My second time is the subject of this story.

I was living in Burns Flat, OK at the time and had recently got my Cessna 120 (C-120) flying again after a tornado dropped a hanger roof on it. I had been flying tail-draggers for a number of years (C-120 and others). I had also met a number of different airplane owners who would come to Burns Flat to get their airplanes serviced at a local repair shop.

One pilot I met had a very expensive Cessna Turbo 210 airplane and also had just had a 1938 Piper J-3 Cub completely rebuilt at the same place where I had my C-120. Funny thing was that he couldn’t fly the J-3 because he had no tail-dragger flight experience. He wanted desperately to take the J-3 to Oshkosh to enter it in the antique competition. He had spent lots of money bringing this airplane back to factory specifications and it looked as if it had just came off the assembly line. He asked me if I would fly the J-3 from West Oklahoma (Burns Flat) to Oshkosh for the air show if he paid my expenses and put me up for a week in a hotel at Oshkosh. I negotiated with him that I could take a friend and he would pay for both of us. Once settled I of course asked my flying buddy Charlie to go along.

Non-flyers call all little airplanes a J-3 Cub but this is not true. The J-3 is really the basis of all the other wantta-be’s built about the same time. It is a steel tube frame, wooden wings; all covered with thin fabric and of course painted bright yellow. It has a 65 horse 4 cylinder Continental engine that has to be hand-propped to start and no electrical system meaning no radios or lights. The 12 gallon fuel tank sets right in front of the instrument panel and the fuel gage is a cork float with a wire sticking up through the fuel cap. As the fuel burns the wire descends. Air speed is about 75-80 mph tops. It is a two place airplane; one in front of the other. The pilot flies from the back seat because that is where the brakes are located and that is where you have to be when flying solo for weight and balance. The brakes are two pegs sticking up through the floor that apply hydraulic pressure to some very rudimentary brakes on the wheels. With two average weight people and full fuel you can carry a toothbrush and an extra shirt in a sling behind the rear seat. BTW the pilot seats are just canvas seats like you find on the beach.  This is as basic an airplane as they make. I’ve provided all this technical information because it is important later.

Charlie and I started our trip planning immediately. We quickly determined that since we had no radios or navigation equipment in the J-3 we would use the IFR approach to get to Oshkosh (I Follow Roads). 

Normal airplane maps show mostly navigational aids and we found that Rand-McNally road maps provided better detail on roads, towns and railroad tracks; all of which we would use.

Another critical issue was how to get access to the Oshkosh airport during the air show. For a short time this is one of if not the busiest airport in the world. The Air Traffic Controller doesn’t even use airplane call signs they just give directions by type and color of airplane. Everyone is expected to listen up and do what they are told without answering back. This is the highpoint of a controllers career and many volunteer to come to Oshkosh just for bragging rights.

To fly a non-radio equipped airplane to the Oshkosh air show you have to send in a waiver request to the FAA weeks before the air show and get a formal approval with directions on how to get into the airport without hearing the controllers. I got my approved waiver and the directions were pretty basic. “Fly to the city of Omro 10 miles NW of the airport. Circle at xx altitude until you see a line of aircraft heading towards the airport. Get in line and follow them to the runway.” That was it!!!

With a full tank of gas, Charlie in the front seat with his road maps to navigate and our extra shirt in back, off we go. We did decide to take along a hand held CB radio so we could talk to the truckers along the highway. This was pretty fun and we became their eyes in the sky looking for speed traps. The owner of the J-3 was going to leave a couple of days later and meet us at Oshkosh so he could take the credit for the J-3 if it won anything in the competition. He also carried our extra cloths.

We expected it to take from 2 to 3 days to make the 850 miles to Oshkosh. 12 Gallons of gas at 4 gallon per hour burn rate and 70 MPH equal 3 hours flight time and 210 miles maximum.  This means you have to make a fuel stop around every 150 miles to be safe. This in itself was a logistics nightmare. We needed an uncontrolled airport (no Air Traffic Control) that had 87 octane fuel for the 65 hp engine and that would be open the hours we needed plus be close to our planed route. This was not as easy as it sounds.

We finally did all we could to make arrangements for fuel and took off for Oshkosh. I had 10 days vacation so counting weekends I had to be back to work in 12 days. We quickly found out that our range could quickly be decreased with any type of headwind. This shot our planned fuel stops to hell. We finally just took our chances and landed at every airport we thought would have gas. We made it past Wichita and Kansas City by following the interstates and railroad tracks out of the towns. Somewhere along the route we were following an Interstate and saw a Volkswagen Bus pass us. We started looking for flags to see the wind direction and when we found a hugh American flag at a car dealer sticking straight out in the opposite direction. We decided to land and wait for it to die down. On landing at a small airport we found I had to have Charlie jump out as soon as I got the plane stopped so he could hold the wing down as I turned into the parking ramp. The wind was so strong it would have flipped the light J-3 if we were not careful.

 

Because we could not always find an uncontrolled airport within the fuel range we had we occasionally had to land at a controlled airport. This was the case at Dubuque, Iowa. Normal procedure for this is to enter the pattern and rock the wings of the airplane. The Air Traffic Controller should, if not sleeping, see you and give you a light gun signal to land (green light). I pulled into downwind and there was a beautiful green light coming from the Control Tower. After landing we tied down the J-3 and went to the tower. I was also an Air Traffic Controller so after thanking them for being so quick with the signal one of the controllers took Charlie and me to a local hotel for the night. Next morning bright and early we stopped by the tower and said we would be leaving soon. There was no other traffic so the controller said just take off on the ramp heading towards Oshkosh to cut down taxi time; many thanks.

After three days enroute we finally arrived at Omro, WI expecting to find many airplanes jockeying to get into the landing sequence. We had hoped to get there real early to miss the rush but delays and wind meant we arrived in the afternoon at peak traffic time. We started the required circling looking for airplanes and there were none to be seen. We double checked that we were at Omro; confirmed. We could see the airport 10 miles away so we just started down highway 21 towards Oshkosh and the airport. That is when every airplane within 50 miles decided to get in line behind us!! I don’t know where they were hiding but there were at least 15 airplanes trying to follow our J-3. The J-3 at cruise speed is slower than most of these airplanes at landing speed. They were having to S-turn and fly close to stall speed to stay behind us. I rammed the throttle full forward and tried to fly as fast as possible to help them out. As we approached the point where I would turn base leg (south) to the airport I could see a WWII Navy Corsair coming straight in from Lake Winnebago. I dived towards him and pulled just behind him in the middle of his prop wash; real bumpy. When I crossed the landing threshold I was way above landing speed so had to pull power and slip the J-3 trying to kill airspeed so I could get it to land. As the wheels touched, there was a guy next to the runway with colored paddles waving frantically for me to get off the runway. When I thought I could do it without ground looping the J-3 I just pulled off into the grass next to the runway. I glanced over my shoulder just in time to see an antique Ford Tri-Motor pass me on the runway. Welcome to Oshkosh!!

We spent the week sightseeing and enjoying all the fly-bys. No way was I going to take the J-3 up in the middle of this so it set on the grass.  It was parked in the middle of about 30-40 other J-3s, all being judged for the best one. Ours actually got 2^nd or 3^rd place (don’t remember which) and the only reason it didn’t win was because the black stripe was off by a quarter inch from original.

It was time to depart so Charlie and I decided that sun up, wheels up was the way to beat the crowds so we lifted off with barely enough light to see. It had rained off and on while we were at Oshkosh and departure day was cloudy and not looking good. Our trip up had been windy but good weather all the way. Our return route was going to be the same as our trip up. As we approached the Mississippi River ground fog started closing in. We barely managed to get back to Dubuque before it closed in and once again our friendly controllers gave us a green light. We spent the night hoping for better weather in the morning. No such luck. Our problem was that with our limited range and no navigation or radio equipment we could not take the risk of getting on top of a fog bank and not be able to get back through it when we needed fuel. We decided to follow the Mississippi River south and try to go around the forecasted bad weather. We took off and got about 20 miles on top of the scattered fog bank and it started to close in. We returned to Dubuque for another green light landing. We waited a couple of hours and tried again. This time the fog was not as bad so we kept going south along the river.  Visibility was pretty low and we knew there were radio towers higher than us along the river. We would fly on one side until we saw a tower then go to the other side to miss the next tower.

I had a flying friend, Jim, at Galesburg, IL so we decided to try and make it to his airport where I knew we would have a hanger to store the J-3. After hours of tense flying we finally made it to Galesburg. Jim was a great pilot who owned a Stearman biplane and also a J-3 cub that he used in an air show act. Jim would land his J-3 on top of a van while the van drove down the runway. Clamps on top of the van would hold the wheels of the J-3 once it was firmly down. 

As we pulled our J-3 up to Jim’s hanger he said “get up front I want to fly your J-3”. Here we go with Jim as pilot and me up front and we never get 20 feet off the ground. He is flying through corn fields and trees barely with enough clearance for the wing tips. After landing I said that is it for me. I had to be back at work the next day and no way were we going to fly the J-3 back to Oklahoma with the current weather.  I called the owner and gave him the bad news. I had made arrangements for Jim’s son to fly the J-3 the rest of the way once the weather cleared. The owner paid for Charlie and my airline ticket back to Oklahoma and that was the end of my trip to Oshkosh.