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If my son flys with me this year, we won't have room for camping gear in the plane. Has anyone shipped their gear ahead of them for pickup? I have seen a FedEx tent at the show to ship stuff back.

Last year I went up in my Cessna and had an extra last minute passenger. We ran out of weight and had to consider shipping. We decided it was cheaper to buy a bunch of our gear when we got there rather than ship stuff back and forth. We ordered (site to store) and picked up what we needed at Walmart. Sleeping bags, tent, air mattresses, cooler, chairs, and a bunch of other odds and ends. We did end up shipping some stuff back ( always cool stuff to be purchased at OSH) but gave away most of the heavy stuff (tent, air mattresses, cooler and left over beer) to some guys who had a Maule. We donated the chairs to the local EAA chapter who helped us fix out plane a couple years back. We picked Walmart because it's a little further from the airport and figured Target might be picked over given that the North 40 bus makes regular runs there and we were in a time crunch.

If I did it again, I'd order the stuff at Target so I could save the headache of trying to get a ride to Walmart.

FedEx is located on the show grounds and shipping stuff home was pretty easy.

In summation, if your stuff is light, ship it. If it's heavy, consider buying it and donating it when the show is over because it might cost less than the shipping.

Does the FedEx site at Oshkosh do packaging as well? I am planning on flying my sonex out to the show this year and with me, my dad, and full fuel there is no way I am going to have enough weight left over to take a weeks worth of clothes for two people in the plane. I can save the box I ship it out in but if I buy anything at the show I may need a bigger box to ship it all back.

Keith
#554

I have pretty good quality lightweight (expensive) backpacking gear so abandoning or donating it isn't an option. I'll call Sonex tomorrow and see what they think of a drop off location that I can easily get to from the show without a car.

FedEx was fully set up on the show grounds for just this kind of thing. No idea on costs. https://www.eaa.org/en/airventure/plan- ... g-services

fastj22 wrote:I have pretty good quality lightweight (expensive) backpacking gear so abandoning or donating it isn't an option.

I get that. All I was saying is you can buy cheap stuff at the store so you don't have to ship your quality stuff back and forth. You might come out cheaper and there's no worry your stuff might get lost or delayed.


FedEx is right there on the show grounds and does supply normal FedEx boxes. There are so many vendors (food, clothing, parts) you should be able to find any size box to ship anything you could think of back home. The guys at Spruce will have a ton of boxes. Talked to the guy at the counter here at Spruce East before they were packing up to go to Sun-N-Fun a couple weeks ago. He said they usually do about a million in sales at OSH. That's a ton of empty boxes.

I'd rather not deal with cheap tents and pads, especially if the storms come in. Got a few options, I like the idea of shipping directly to the show. Only problem is if I can't get there to retrieve my stuff.

fastj22 wrote:I'd rather not deal with cheap tents and pads, especially if the storms come in. Got a few options, I like the idea of shipping directly to the show. Only problem is if I can't get there to retrieve my stuff.

I'm sure someone there from the Sonex community would help out if it ever came to that :-)