By ANN Senior
Contributing Editor Kevin "Hognose" O'Brien
Are you counting the days yet? We are! And since the show
officially kicks off in exactly one month, it's time to remind you
all! Airventure 2004 runs from July 27th to August 2nd, so mark
your calendar and join a Who's Who of aviation for the
aviation world's answer to Woodstock, lemming migrations, and
the Haj. Besides, there'll be nothing on TV but a political
convention, and even the politicians would rather be at
Oshkosh.
The Theme: the Future
Officially, the theme is: "Launching the Next Century of
Flight". The contrast with last year's show couldn't be clearer.
Last year we looked back on a century of flight; they may have been
absent in body, but the guests of honor were Orville and Wilbur
Wright. and all the thousands that have built aviation in a long,
unbroken chain of human drama from
THEN to NOW.
This year the guests of
honor are very much with us, and they are aviators who look forward
to the new century of flight: folks like Burt Rutan, Mike Melville,
Dr. Peter Diamandis, and the men and women behind NASA's
record-setting X-43. Not to mention the grasssroots of our next
century, the incubator of future Rutans and Melvilles: the Young
Eagles program, with its new chairman, Harrison Ford, taking on the
mantle previously borne by Cliff Robertson and Chuck Yeager.
Hmmm... two guys who are in movies, and one about whom a
movie was made. Do I detect a pattern emerging?
It's a great time to be an aviator and there is no better
place to be than Wittman Field at the end of July.
Be There, Be Square... or Be Here
If you can fly in that's great; if you fly your homebuilt in you
get this nifty patch depicting a Sonerai. If you do fly in, for the love of Mike
check the NOTAM. Don't be the guy all the
other pilots are talking about this year. If you plan to drive in,
or take a human-mailing-tube, there's some helpful info on the
Airventure website.
But what if you can't be there? Well, then, the best place to be
is right here -- feasting your eyeballs on this website
and/or Propwash you're reading. We're going to have stories on
what's new -- including lots of X-Prize stuff -- and
what's old but still flying -- including lots of warbird stuff
-- some of which is "new" because warbirds are still
being found and restored even now.
We'll have plenty of pictures, both the functional kind guys
like me take, and the award-winning photos that Tyson Rininger of
TVR Photography takes... you know, the stuff that
makes me want to cremate my camera.
Expect lots of words
too -- our words, putting things in context, or translating the
precise and dense verbiage of pocket-protector engineers into
simple pilot's English; and the words of the luminaries, designers,
boy geniuses and old, bold pilots that make Oshkosh what it is.
We can't bring you the heady aroma of castor oil a 1914 rotary
engine gives off, or the vibration you feel in your chest when the
Marines' Harrier hovers nearby, but we are going to try our
best.
How is Aero-News going to Cover Airventure?
As always -- and like no other aviation news source --
we're gonna saturate the place. Aero-News is going to have the
usual cracked... er... crack team along with a few new faces. Our
mobile office will be in its usual place next to the Media
Center. Stop in and say hey -- we don't bite... well, Josan -- the
publisher's bodyguard canine -- does, but she's minding the phones
at HQ. We're gonna be out and about a lot, and going back and forth
to our OSH house, but somebody should usually be in. Especially if
you have a story for us!
We are already banging out embargoed stories, fighting over plum
assignments, and boning up on the whole world of
what's-new-that-do-go-up so that we can bring you the best possible
coverage of what we see. We wish you all could be there. Of
course, if that were the case, we could relax and enjoy the show,
instead of typing like mad chimpanzees until 0330... But we know
you can't, so let us be your eyes and ears.
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