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Fun times at OSH arrival
Been listening to the LiveATC feed and watching Flightradar24. They're basically "trickle flowing" them in to Runway 9 with an occasional right turn to 36. ATC folks doing terrific and patient work with occasionally highly disgruntled pilots who are ignoring the instruction not to get on the radio....
Interesting to click on a given aircraft on FlightRadar24 and see that it's been around the lake 15 times... Be safe out there! |
Gaggle doesn?t touch what I saw.
I missed OSH this year and am sort of relieved from watching the goat rope this afternoon. Saw this on the feed while listening to Fisk and Towers on the laptop. I feel for this poor RV-8. 2 hours looking for a hole. Not unusual today from the looks of it. For a few hours, only 1 of 3 showing at Fisk made it in with others forced back to Ripon. Fly safe everyone!
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Due to a number of other destinations on our trip we drove to OSH this year. On the drive up today we spent time at Ripon, Fisk, and watching arrivals to RWY 9. We arrived at Ripon about 1-2 hours after weather went from IFR to "marginal VFR" and was pretty much VFR with rapidly improving conditions.
From the ground, Ripon looked like an absolute madhouse. Airplanes coming from every direction, breaking into the "conga line" from both sides, speeds varying, etc etc. Lots of "last second" break-offs. At one point EVERY aircraft turned left - clearly instructed to do so by controllers at Fisk. At Fisk, listening and watching, the madness was even more impressive - controllers were asking for "1 mile" spacing and it looked to me like "1/4 mile" spacing at best. Probably 70% of aircraft arriving at/approach Fisk were turned back to rejoin the line - this didn't seem to be helping as more aircraft were clearly arriving at Ripon by the minute. Even at Fisk, the adherence to flying "over the tracks" was amazingly inconsistent. I was also surprised how many singles, including RV's, were flying the "high route" given the performance capabilities, but they weren't getting any special treatment. Watching arrivals at RWY 9 things were much better, although I saw several very closely spaced arrivals with "go around" instructions - in one case a Malibu was flying higher and faster than another aircraft on final and I don't think the pilot had any clue there was another aircraft below/ahead. Quite a spectacle and a good learning experience in how to prepare when I fly to OSH. |
One of my buddies goes to the fisk trailer every year and pitches a chair right by the ATC guys. He said it's a lot of fun to sit and watch them and the traffic.
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After holding for more than an hour 5-miles south of RIPON, I diverted to KUNU Dodge County and took an UBER to OSH.
![]() I did not like what I was seeing on Stratus Foreflight ADS-B traffic in. ![]() I was only burning 5.5 gallons / hours but did not like that ATC wanted 1-mile spacing and then 2-mile spacing before going back to 1-mile spacing. This is my 19th trip in my RV to OSH and it is by far the WORST experience that I have ever had flying to AirVenture. |
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We tried - and failed - twice to get in today. Spent the night in Watertown, headed north as soon as the weather lifted. Thought we might be ahead of the arrival crush...yeah, no. On our first try we spent about an hour in the Ripon area. Fisk controller were spinning the majority of aircraft out due to improper spacing, which meant there was a steady stream if traffic coming south and then turning back towards Ripon. Good luck trying to figure out how to either fit into that line, or get in the back.
The one time we did get slightly past Ripon, aircraft were all over the place. Hardly anyone was actually over the tracks, and the resulting lateral spacing seemed to really kind of enable the gaggling. I bailed out to the left after being unable to keep spacing on the plane in front of me, while there was also another plane sidling up 500' off my right wing. Then they shut arrivals down and we started holding around Green Lake. At first, this seemed like it might be great - establish and maintain good spacing on the aircraft in front of us, and when they started clearing the hold, we'd just get on the tracks and go. Except by the third lap or so, there was nothing resembling a unified hold. Some aircraft were following the lake shore. Others were flying what seemed like 5nm circles vaguely centered on the lake. Eventually I realized that whenever they did release people from holding, we'd just end up with the exact same gaggle activity as before. So we headed back to Watertown, got lunch and some gas, and tried again a couple hours later. Thought maybe it'd slow down later in the evening, but nope, it seemed actually worse than the first time. Again we made a couple of bids to join the conga line, but every time I'd end up slow, or way too close to someone, or with another aircraft abreast of me, so eventually we gave up again. It saddness me a bit to think that the most effective technique for getting in probably would have been to stop trying to get good spacing, or stay over the tracks, and just gaggle my way to Fisk and hope that I'd win the lottery up there. We're going to try to be at Ripon at 7 AM sharp tomorrow morning. If that doesn't work out, I guess we'll just camp at Fond Du Lac. GAC is reporting "close to full," so if we're not in early we'll likely be hosed. Also, I should just open a fuel account at RYV. Was slightly amusing having their line guys fuel me three times in one day... |
Sunday evening we saw a V tail Bonanza ordered to go around as he almost landed on a Cessna. So the guy powered up, starts to climb, flies over the Cessna and lands in front of him. I'm guessing he didn't understand the term "Go around".
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My 5 year old son and I tried once, waited a few hours at Portage listening to LiveATC,and then bailed to a free hotel in Madison for the night. We’re saddling up soon for another try.
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