What a Show!
We just returned home from Oshkosh AirVenture 2021. Just got in around 2AM Tuesday morning No issues on the return trip. We did catch a hotel Sunday night near South Bend.
We had quite the adventure! What a show for us! I want to thank all of you who stopped by our booth to check out our P-36/40 project and the Verner Motor radial engines. We are thrilled to have such a huge response to our LiteFighter line and the Verners! We reached our goal of signing up more than ten potential Beta kit builders and many, many more are now waiting for the standard kit offering. Wow! We are humbled to know there are so many with our same passion for the fighters of WW2 and sport aviation.
We also had many people inquire about the half scale B17 project. Yes, that is right. Half-scale B-17G. It will be a four to five seater with four Verner 7U engines. I will tell more very soon. The Bally Bomber was tied-down at the Brown Arch. It is only 1/3 scale and very difficult for even one person to fit into. However, Jack Bally proved it can be done. Half scale opens up many more possibilities for a useful aircraft. We have a family with B-17 roots who can support this mission and they are looking to find out how many other airframes might be produced for individuals, museums and organizations. Thank you folks for your interest. Contact Mel at: 650-419-7175 or HalfScaleB17@yahoo.com Let’s do it!
We had to drive out to Oshkosh from our base in Groton, CT. It took about 18 hours of driving our F150 super crew pulling a 20 ft box trailer - with a tire blow-out on the way. Likely ran over something and blew out the sidewall on a trailer tire. No harm to us or the vehicles/payload. Fixed it and kept rolling. No other incidents on the way or any coming back fortunately. However, we did have some crazy adventures!
We left Groton late - Saturday evening instead of Friday afternoon. We just had to finish and paint the cowling for the display = so was painting the cowl parts on Saturday morning after pulling a week of all-nighters. the whole week before we had painted the fairings, applied the decals, installed the ailerons and controls, many many final parts. Then, we had to drive non-stop to Oshkosh. Four drivers swapping out every couple hours. We made it to Oshkosh Sunday afternoon around 3:45pm. Setup went well and we had the plane all together and painted for the first time. Cheers! Hit the rental house and crashed - slept very soundly! Head just hit the pillow and then woke up in the morning - not knowing where I was or what was going on. Oh yah, Oshkosh!
Monday morning we hit the booth at 8am and had multiple customers there waiting for us! It never let up all week till Saturday afternoon and Sunday which were both busy with some lulls. An amazing amount of foot traffic through the booth! I think we might qualify for the dead grass award! We also had workers from the other vendors and kitplane companies stop by and check out the plane. We had many of our friends stop by to say hello and made many new ones. Aviation is such a small and close community.
Also during the week, we were interviewed by Aero News Network, EAA and Kitplanes. I have to thank them! Will link their articles and video’s when we get notified. Stay tuned!
Wednesday night was a crazy-wicked storm. Fortunately, it mostly missed the airport proper at Oshkosh. Just rain and lightning. It was forecasted to hit the show and everyone was quickly preparing for it. Aircraft were flying out and those that couldn’t, were getting jammed into any available hangar space. I saw P-51s and show planes covered in bubble wrap to deal with the predicted hail. Campers were being bussed to the museum for cover. We tied-down our plane double good and buttoned-up our tent not knowing what would become of it by morning. We headed to the rental house in Omro. That was a mistake! That is were the center of the super-cell hit at midnight. We had a straight line wind or tornado hit the property and took out 10 trees and cut power to the community. There were four tornados and 7 lives lost in cars in the local towns. The lighting in that storm was incredible! 3 to 4 bolts a second for an hour or more. The sound and reverberations were incredible. Everyone on our street was fortunate and all the falling trees just missed buildings and vehicles. Not so on the other side of the river we overlooked. Met a gentleman farmer a couple days later at the local tavern/pizza joint who lost his barn and garage to a tornado. It must have formed over us as he was directly down-wind from our place. 6th generation farm. Lots of memories and family stuff destroyed there. He was quite emotional - understandably. Again, we were fortunate and only lost power for two days. It was great to get it back on and able to wash laundry and ourselves.
Next day, the show didn’t skip a beat. Thursday opened up and all the warbirds and camper aircraft arrived back at AirVenture. Our booth was fine and full of people. Adventure!
Crew at Oshkosh: Sam and Karen, Scott, Nathan, Aaron, Oliver and last but certainly not least - Trevor.
Paul and Dave could not make it this time. Missed-out dudes! They had very good excuses.
Next - prep for engine start. We have to finish up the cowling work and throttle install. Making changes from the original idea. Also waiting for the exhaust to be welded-out. Our welder is working hard on finishing customer exhausts and it might be a bit. Will keep you informed and post video of our first engine run here shortly!
