Our Trip to Airventure 99' - Oshkosh, WI

I have been wanting to fly to Oshkosh for some time and this year I managed to talk a few friends into doing the trip. The first person I had to talk into it was a buddy that flew a Rans like mine. I wanted to fly but I also wanted somebody else to being flying along also, kind of like the buddy system if something happened to either of us the other could go for help. Well, I started talking it up to Ronnie Wood, he was interested. The next buddy Richard Lamirande he did not want to fly that far, but he did want to take part in the trip. He decided to drive and Ronnie's partner, David, wanted to go along also. Ronnie and I both wanted to keep using unleaded fuel on the whole trip if possible, It was hard to find airports along the route that had unleaded fuel, so I tried to plan the route so that we would not be too far from, (our ground crew) Richard and David's, route along the ground. Our route was real close to the roads that they needed to follow, so they brought us fuel at 3 of the 4 fuel stops.

Our trip started on Saturday, July 25th we planned on leaving at sun up. Ronnie had flown his Rans over from 4M7 - Russellville, KY, the evening before. We all met at the airport to find that there was a thick fog that was hanging around the airport. We got to take off about 1-1/2 to 2 hrs. later. It was nice and calm, we took off from my home field HVC - Hopkinsville-Christian Co. Airport, our first stop was SIV - Sullivan Co. Airport, Sullivan, IN. We climbed to between 2,500 and 3,000 ft, we were talking to each other on 122.75 about 40 minutes into our trip our friends from Greenville, KY were on a short trip to the south and over heard us talking, then a ittle later a friend down near Franklin, TN heard us, they all wish us luck and were wishing that they were going with us. We had to fly around the west side of Evensville, IN's airspace, I spotted Mark Smith field off to the left as we flew by. We talked to our friends almost all the way to SIV, we were surprised that our little hand held radios with external antennas were picking up that far from them. It took us 2.7 hrs. Our ground crew saw us when we enter a final approach for SIV. A few minutes after we got out of our planes our ground crew was there with our fuel. Well, we were really doing this, this was the furthest that Ronnie and I had been from our airports. We refueled, checked our planes over and we were off for our next stop C34 - Gibson City, IL.

Somewhere along the way I took this picture of Ronnie, It was either during this leg or the next, as you can see we weren't in Kentucky any more! The roads are straight, the land is flat, and there's not many trees around! C34 is the only airport on our route that had auto fuel, we had called ahead to make sure, it was a good thing because it was also the only airport that was way out of the way for our ground crew. We stopped for fuel while our ground crew plugged on. As we were getting close to C34 we were wondering what the airport was going to be like, because there was nothing around just flat open farm land. Well there it was right out in the middle of a corn feild. It had a blacktop runway north and south and a grass cross strip east and west. There were about three building and we could not see a pump anywhere. We got out of our planes and then two men came out of one of the buildings and went over and opened the door of one of the other building. They brought out a truck that had a small tank on the back of it, and we refueled, payed them for it, slugged back a can of coke, and we were off. Next stop IS65 - Sandwich, IL.

IS65 is on the south-west side of Chicago.The runway is in the back yard of a row of houses which each had a large hanger attached to it, must be nice! IS65 was also about 25 miles off the highway for our ground crew, they arrived about fourty minutes after we landed. They had aready eatten, so they watched the planes while Ronnie and I took the truck down the road to grab a sandwich in Sandwich. Our next stop was only about two hours away, so we all decided to plug on and stay the night at our next stop, UNU - Dodge County, WI.

Here's one picture that I just had to throw in here early, it is a picture of Ronny that I took on the way home, just after we flew over a cloud layer, it was beautiful!!! Click on it to enlarge it!

I'm still working on this page, as I get time!

Send me E-Mail, click here -> bhester@hopkinsville.net