T

tracy

Well Known Member
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I'm thinking about flying my 8 to Oshkosh this year. It will be my first appearance and I'm planning on camping for 3 days with the aircraft. If I go up on Wednesday, will there be room for me in the rv section or is this a hit or miss type deal? If anyone from the Atlanta area wants to go up as a group, I would be interested. Thanks
 
They have never turned any homebuilt away from HBC, although it has gotten pretty crowded a few times. By Wednesday, there will be quite a few open spaces.

Enjoy your trip.
 
It sounds like people will have already left by Wed or is it that people haven't shown up yet?
 
tracy said:
It sounds like people will have already left by Wed or is it that people haven't shown up yet?
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Folks start leaving on Wednesday. By Thursday afternoon a large number of RV'ers will have departed. Monday and Tuesday are the prime days if you want to see all the RVs.
 
tracy said:
I'm thinking about flying my 8 to Oshkosh this year. It will be my first appearance and I'm planning on camping for 3 days with the aircraft. If I go up on Wednesday, will there be room for me in the rv section or is this a hit or miss type deal? If anyone from the Atlanta area wants to go up as a group, I would be interested. Thanks
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If you want to camp by the aircraft, you want Homebuilt Camping (HBC), which might as well be called RV Camping, as the majority of aircraft will be RVs. This is not too far from the main RV parking area. I'll be in HBC, assuming nothing goes strange when I replace my dead mag with a P-Mag.

If you plotted aircraft numbers vs day of the week, you'd see two humps in the data - a big hump early in the week, and a smaller hump over the final weekend. Monday and Tuesday are very busy. Some aircraft start leaving on Tuesday, and a whole bunch leave on Wednesday. Thursday is quieter, then there is another small burst of arrivals on Friday of folks who plan to be there for the final weekend.
 
Kevin Horton said:
If you want to camp by the aircraft, you want Homebuilt Camping (HBC), which might as well be called RV Camping, as the majority of aircraft will be RVs. This is not too far from the main RV parking area. I'll be in HBC, assuming nothing goes strange when I replace my dead mag with a P-Mag.

If you plotted aircraft numbers vs day of the week, you'd see two humps in the data - a big hump early in the week, and a smaller hump over the final weekend. Monday and Tuesday are very busy. Some aircraft start leaving on Tuesday, and a whole bunch leave on Wednesday. Thursday is quieter, then there is another small burst of arrivals on Friday of folks who plan to be there for the final weekend.
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I was wondering if there were graphs available somewhere showing arrival traffic intensity during past AirVentures.
 
Well shoot! I planned my arrival for Thursday and wanted to see as many RV's as I could! I should have asked the board what was the best time of the show to be there. Work and prior reservations cant be changed. I guess thats the hazards of being a newbie!
 
There are usually two "waves" at OSH. The first wave arrives early, and starts to depart midweek.

The second wave arrives Wednesday/Thursday.

Thirty years ago, the two waves were about equal sized. Since we lost the WWII guys, the second wave is smaller.

Note: All of this is weather dependent. If the weather sucks early in the week (think: Sloshkosh), the two waves can reverse.

This year there is a new wild card, with the Thunderbirds doing the weekend shows. This may be enough to skew the two waves.

I avoid the issue by staying all week. This will be #32 for me?
 
I normally fly into Osh on Sunday and then leave for home Thursday morning, but last year I had to install a new propeller and then fly off the 5 hours of Phase 1 before I could go, so I didn't get up there until Thursday and stayed until the closing Sunday. I got there just after 12 noon on Thursday and there were many open camping spots all over HBC vacated by folks who already left, but overall there were still lots and lots of RVs to see and photograph.
 
Great, if anyone can think of anything else I should know, fill me in. I'm still looking for other RV's to fly with on Wed. I may have another 8 going with me out of Chattanooga. Oh, I read where there could only be one tent per aircraft, do they hold you to this or can I squeeze two 1man tents around my plane?
 
tracy said:
Oh, I read where there could only be one tent per aircraft, do they hold you to this or can I squeeze two 1man tents around my plane
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The one tent/ plane rule is enforced about as vigorously as the no alcohol policy. Just keep then tents within the footprint of your plane (so as not to block the taxiway) and if anyone asks, just tell them the other one is for your kids.

jjhoneck said:
This year there is a new wild card, with the Thunderbirds doing the weekend shows. This may be enough to skew the two waves.
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As others have noted, the trend in Homebuilt is to come early and leave early. The peak days for viewing RVs are Monday and Tuesday. By Wednesday the departures will start to outpace arrivals and things will open up, a trend that continues until the end. There is a small second wave for the weekend but it is overwhelmed by the departures and hardly even noticeable. The T-birds are going to have an impact this year, what that will be is anyone's guess. My guess is that a lot of the homebuilts (especially those parked out on the flight line) will bail out before Friday in order to miss all the hassle that comes with the T-birds.

rleffler said:
I'm sure that Jeff Point has numbers for HBP and HBC.
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We do keep a lot of data on how many of which types come and go on which days, however I don't have it in any sort of presentable format and don't have the ambition to make it so:) The last time I did was several years ago for a presentation to the Homebuilt Aircraft Counsel, but those numbers are pretty dated.

Bottom line is- while Monday and Tuesday are the peak days, we have never run out of space for homebuilts. If you show up in your RV, we will find you a spot to park at Oshkosh. It might not be a great spot, and you might not like it, but we will find you a spot. As the saying goes, if you want a good seat to the show, get there early (or come later when everyone else has left!) That said, we are going to be making some changes this year to the way things are arranged in HBC, which I have waited until now to announce. I will start another thread to explain it, hopefully tonight if these storms don't take out the power.
 
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