One month to go

As of today, there are 30 days to go until opening day at AirVenture. That’s exciting and scary at the same time. It’s exciting because so much has happened on the site since last year that we’re eager to show off all the new things. It’s scary because there’s always a little voice in the back of your head wondering, “What did I forget?”

It’s felt like AirVenture this week on the grounds, too. Temps in the high 80s and high humidity have been rough on outside workers, but great for growing grass.


Camp Scholler opened today, with several dozen campers at the gate this morning when we began taking camping registrations. Some of them will stake out their campsites and head back home for a few weeks (yes, they do pay the daily fee for the site from the time they claim it), while others are coming in and will spend the next month volunteering on the grounds. Those people do everything from plant flowers to drive tractors, and we’re happy to have each and every one of them here.

We also have work groups from three EAA chapters here this weekend. It’s especially fun to take these people around the site and show them what’s new. I often get some good ideas from the members, since they look at the site from the outside as a visitor.


Last week the EAA staff took tram rides around the site to get an up-close look at the changes. You would think that being a staff member would make it easy to know what is going where as it happens, but each employee is so focused on their own areas that it’s tough to get a regular view of the big picture. Since staffers are EAA members, too, they have many of the same questions that attendees have about the changes.

If you’d like to see a consolidated guide to the site changes, you can download a Quick Reference Guide we put together. Just go to http://www.airventure.org/siteplan/guidechanges.html. It’s the same reference guide that the EAA staff and volunteer chairmen are receiving.

Pretty soon, we’ll start to see the tents arrive and we’ll discover how everything will fit together. The site takes on a whole new look once the tents start to go up, giving more the appearance that most everybody sees when they’re at Oshkosh.

One month to go. If we pack a million things into each of those 30 days, I think we can make it!