Airshow / EAA / oshkosh

THE MAGIC OF AIRVENTURE

by Scott Jankowski · Published August 19, 2018

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“Magical” is one of the many words one could use to describe EAA’s AirVenture, staggering is another one to describe this years event held at Oshkosh Wisconsin’s Wittman Regional Airport. The statistics are in for this years event which was held from July 23rd to the 29th, approximately 601,000 people attended this year. More than 10,000 aircraft arrived at Wittman and surrounding airports, with Wittman’s 3 runways handling 19,588 total aircraft operations between July 20th and July 30th, that is an average of 134 movements an hour! Staggering to say the least. AirVenture never fails to bring together an amazing assortment of aircraft and themes. This year was no different with celebrations that included the 100th Anniversary of the Royal Air Force, the 70th Anniversary of the United States Air Force Reserve Command, and the 80h Anniversary of the North American T-6, SNJ, Harvard type aircraft. The 2018 main theme was “Year of the Tanker” which brought many examples of front line refueling aircraft flown by the United States Air Force, Air Force Reserve, Air National Guard, and the United States Navy. The following is just a very small sample of the “Highlights” of this year’s show, be on the lookout for more in depth coverage to come! “Blue Skies To All!”

Tags: airventure EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2018 magic

Scott Jankowski

Scott Jankowski - Franklin, Wisconsin Like so many others my love of aviation started when I was young, very young. I was only three years old when my Parents took me to my first air show here in Milwaukee, the rest you could say is “history”. I would read aviation magazines instead of Comic Books. I would prefer my Dad take me to the airport to watch airplanes instead of throwing a Football around. I grew up watching Convair 580’s, DC9’s and 727’s from the terminal here in Milwaukee, no Stage Three noise compliance back then! I started to seriously take pictures in the Mid 1980’s , for my birthday that year I finally had my first decent camera. I would head down to the airport with my pockets full of Kodak Film and take pictures of anything and everything. It did not matter if it was a Air Wisconsin Dash-7 or a 128TH ARW KC-135E if it had an engine I took a picture of it. I would drop those rolls off to be developed and three days later tear into the envelopes to see the results, which to be honest were not that good but there were a few keepers every once and a while. Fast forwarding to today with much better equipment and skills I spend as much time as I can at both General Mitchell International and Chicago O’Hare which are my Hometown Airports. While times and aircraft have changed the excitement is still as great as it was back all of those years ago. It makes no difference if it is 737, P-51, F-16, or Lear 35 I will not pass on any photo opportunity as you may not get that chance again. Even though my primary focus is on Commercial Aviation I still frequent as many Air shows as I can in the short Summer Season. I am fortunate enough to have EAA Air Venture in my backyard only being only an Hour and Half from my home. I routinely attend Air shows here in Milwaukee, Rockford, Chicago, Ypsilanti and the Quad Cities. I am very fortunate to be part of the Photorecon.Net and PHX Spotters Team and am looking forward to bringing everyone some Air show and Airliner action from the Midwest Region!