Oshkosh AirVenture 2015

[fastj22]

Mike Neidenthal and I left at 0630 yesterday and arrived back at KFLY at 1730. Got pinned down in Burlington CO to wait out a hailstorm for a while but otherwise just fought head winds all the way home. Both planes ran great. Total flight time time there and back was 15.1 hours.

[MichaelFarley56]

I saw you and Mike taxi out as I was getting ready to leave John. Both planes look and sound great!

Glad to hear you made it home safely!

[fastj22]

It was a very strange departure. We couldn't find a marshal to wing walk us out of the camping row, so we just powered up and left. It was early, 0630.
Then as taxiing past warbirds, no flagmen, just us. We kept rolling to the end expecting to be routed, no flagmen. Listening to the tower, but just some chatter of a DC3 getting clearance to take off. I wanted to depart 27 but wasn't about to navigate over there without flagmen.

So just headed down to 36L with Mike in tow. Finally a Mooney pulled out in front of us from vintage and we followed him to the end. The Mooney just rolled onto 36 and launched. I hesitated, then called the tower, Sonex flight of two ready to go on 36L. Tower cleared us for take off. So much for a stressful departure. I did notice a van of pink shirts rolling up as we left.

[JT1974]

I just wanted to say thanks to all the Sonex, Waiex and Onex builders who made it to Oshkosh and parked near the Sonex Booth. I drove to Airventure on Thursday with my 11 year old daughter and she was very excited to see all the airplanes that other people built in their garages.

Special thanks to Dudley Foster for flying your Onex all the way from Massachusetts. Seeing all those planes gave me the extra motivation I needed to buckle down and focus on building Onex 182.

[nwawingman]

Oshkosh AirVenture 2015 was awesome! This was my second year in a row for my wife and I to fly into Oshkosh and camp in the home built camping area. It was great seeing all of our Sonex friends and meeting new ones. This year was the first time for me to be able to taxi over to the Sonex open house. It was lots of fun to be a part of the open house and taxi back with all the other Sonex.

We departed Friday at 7:45am for our 600 mile journey home and arrived home at 4:30 pm after making 3 stops along the way. Sonex ran beautifully, loaded to gross weight with both my wife and I and all our camping gear, for the 13 hr 1200 mile round trip flight.

Can't wait to do it again next year! Hope to see you there.

[MichaelFarley56]

Great news Rick! I'm glad you guys made it home safely. The Sonex looks beautiful as always!!

[Sonex1243]

Oshkosh 2015 was once again a super event, 5th year in a row attending! I flew in once and have been driving in with a friend to camp.

Thanks to all the Sonex, Waiex and Onex builders attending who took the time (sorry, can't remember all your names) to answer my questions and share their building experiences as I marveled at all those aircraft. I also would like to thank the folks who volunteered their time during the give flight build of the wings, I hung out there pretty much the second day and watched / asked questions as a complete wing was assembled. Levi and all the volunteer's were great in taking the time to "clear up" several questions I had during the wing construction, which is where I am at right now, they made it look so easy!

I can't wait to get back to building #1243 now that I am stoked after KOSH!

[wlarson861]

Well, N861SX finally made it home today (Saturday 7/25/15). We took off Friday morning without any hassle and started south towards Burlington Iowa and on to Clinton Mo. to finish the weekend fishing. About 45 min. into the flight we started seeing oil on the inside firewall, not a good sign. Oil temp was still good at 175 and pressure was 50+ psi. Landed in Monroe (KEFT) and took the cowl off and found the leak was the oil input to the turbo. One hour into the flight we had lost only about 1/4 quart of oil. Tightened the flare fitting and topped up the oil and decided to try for home (less than an hour). A few min after take off the oil reappeared and this time pressure was down around 30 psi. Landed at Freeport IL.(KFEP). The folks there put us in an empty hangar. We had lost at least a quart of oil in the 22 min flight. Today we drove back to Freeport to fix the engine. When I removed the oil line from the top of the turbo, the flared tube had cracked and it only took a little pressure to break it the rest of the way off. Had to fabricate a new line and when tested there were no leaks. Flew the 8 tenths of an hour home with no issues. So our trip to Oshkosh this year was 1 hour 40 min. to and about 27 hours home!! The folks at Freeport would not take any money for the overnight so I will stop and buy gas whenever I'm in the area and will stop on the way to Oshkosh next year.

[avee8r]

I suspect I'm the last one to safely arrive home after a great week in Oshkosh. I left at 11 am Oshkosh time this morning (Sunday) and had a great trip, stopping in Aurora IL and Coldwater MI. It was the smoothest 3 flights I can remember going or coming to EAA, thanks to the high overcast most of the way. I even passed a Beech 18!
This was definitely the year to bring my Sonex to share with so many people. Sunday's open house was great and it was great fun parading back to the tie downs. We'll try to figure out how to upload the video to youtube. Thanks everyone for departing early and leaving my Sonex that's "All Potential" alone as the best customer built example, at least for at least the last couple of days. ;)
Happy Landings
John
N50NX

[Bryan Cotton]

I have a former co-worker spending one last night at KOSH tonight. He flew his Bearhawk from Connecticut to Oshkosh by way of Alaska. He was no doubt inspired by Robert Barber and Aaron Knight.