I love the beauty of the clouds.
Taking off from Tunica and headed north, we skirted underneath the Memphis
class Bravo airspace at 2500 feet. Once clear of the Memphis airspace it
was scattered to broken clouds but a bit bumpy so we climbed on up to just
over the top of the could deck at 9,500 feet and rode in nice smooth air
for our trip towards our next fuel stop - Litchfield, IL (3LF):
I love the beauty of the clouds.
With a bit of a headwind, the trip up to Litchfield took just shy of 3
hours:
Litchfield airport is right on old Route 66. Not much around ,but they do have a courtesy van and the 100LL was priced at $3.35 gallon for the Oshkosh special, plus they were providing free bottle waters.
Here I am standing at the door to the FBO at Litchfield:
We took off from Litchfield, continuing on north, with our next planned stop
to be Oshkosh which is just about 338 miles away. Along the way through
northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin we saw a lot of windmills and
farms:
When we got to within 40 miles of Oshkosh, it was looking very stormy in the direction of OSH. In fact during the last 100 miles we had to steer around a few big thunderstorms always keeping at least a 20 mile wide berth around them.
Tuning in to the Fisk approach frequency, they were announcing the airport was temporarily closed due to thunderstorms and had both lakes full of airplanes holding. They said that if you were approaching Ripon (the point of entry for the approach to OSH) to just find a spot and circle until further notice. They said it would be at least 1/2 hour to 45 minutes of waiting. Well, after a little over 3 hours of flying, we decided to divert to the nearest airport to fuel up and wait it out. I hit "nearest" on my GPS and it pointed me to Dodge County airport in Juneau, WI.
We headed over and landed along with about 40 or 50 other airplanes. Here
we are getting some fuel at Juneau, WI:
We sat at Juneau (just 40 miles south of OSH) for about an hour and had a sandwich and some cookies while we waited for the airport at OSH to re-open. Even after it re-opened, they still had to clear all of the airplanes that were holding over the lakes near Ripon and Fisk, so that took quite a while.
Once we thought they might be ready for new approaches to OSH we took off and headed that way. We finally entered the Oshkosh VFR arrival procedure over Ripon at 1,800 feet and 90 knots following the tracks northeast toward Fisk. We were in trail behind a Cessna 172 RG, following him at 1/2 mile spacing when suddenly the Cessna lowered his flaps and gear and then started descending toward the railroad tracks at Fisk. We kept an eye on him but continued on at 1800 feet and 90 knots. All at once, Michelle said "he's coming back up right under us!". At that point I banked into a hard left turn and dropped out of the sequence to Oshkosh to avoid a collision with the Cessna. I still don't know what he was doing and guess I never will.
We headed back to Ripon to start all over (muttering to myself with a few
choice words for that Cessna pilot). Back at Ripon, we got back in
line and started the procedure all over again at 1800 feet and 90 knots following
the tracks toward Fisk. Once at Fisk, the controllers cleared us to
Runway 9 and a frequency change to the tower.
As we approached the tower, I heard them clear an arriving IFR arrival to runway 9. They then saw me and said "Red and White high wing taildragger - cleared to land runway 9 land on the white dot". As I approached runway 9, I got all set up for the white dot, perfect approach speed and glide-slope, I was thinking to myself this needs to be a greaser with all these 100's of people watching the landing at OSH. All at once I heard the controller say in a fairly excited voice: "Red & White high wing on short final - IMMEDIATE left turn, break off the approach!!!" I banked hard over and made a left turn off the approach adding throttle to keep from stalling. The controller says: "Sorry about that - I had to get you out of the way of a jet that was coming down your tailpipe fast. Just make a tight 360 and come back on to short final to finish your landing, land on the white dot".
So here we come once again perfectly aligned and on short final for runway
9 at Osh. Off to the right on final approach for runway 9, we could
see the airplane camping area affectionately known as "the north 40"
Approaching the white dot on runway 9 (you can see our shadow on the
runway):
One nice landing later and we have arrived at Oshkosh 2009!!!! Here
we are after securing the airplane and unpacking all of our stuff:
