Coincidental Floss

AirVenture, Day 6

Today was yet another day that didn’t seem to have a particular theme. I was only in the booth for a couple of hours, but did some very well received demos to a few of the seemingly limitless number of pilots who have no idea what Flight Simulator can do for them, or, in some cases, that it exists at all. I talked with someone and their publisher about something I can’t talk about yet, and I met for a half hour with that guy who has that one airplane that’s part of another project I can’t talk about. He was very excited to help us out.

It’s always remarkable to see assorted flavors of Flight Simulator running at so many other people’s booths. There’s at least half a dozen avionics manufacturers that you try their products while flying with ours. You’d think they’d at least say "thank you", but what are you going to do? It’s not like we’re the richest company in the world with an army of lawyers … Oh, wait. Actually, we love to see FS on display like that. The closer we come to ubiquity in the aviation world, the happier I’ll be. And, to paraphrase Ian Fleming, nothing ubiqs like ubiquity.

I had a wrap-up interview today with Sky Blue Radio, and, in it, I said something convoluted about how time seems to be a bit schizophrenic at AirVenture – suddenly, it’s the eve of the last day, and I’m only just now getting started … yet some part of me feels like I’ve been here for years. Regardless, tomorrow is the day when I get to clean up the mess I made, shipping all the stuff back to Redmond that I shipped out here before I left.

The thoughts of a lot of people here go out to the family of Gerald Beck, the pilot and builder of a scratch-built P-51A recreation that was killed in a formation landing collision with a P-51D in front of the crowd here yesterday. This was probably the only time in my life when I was glad not to see a Mustang. I heard the crash, and I’ve seen some pictures, and that’s already too much. (The images aren’t hard to find on the web – I can’t bring myself to post any links here). There’s supposed to be some solace in the fact that he died doing what he loved, and I hope that’s the case for his friends and family. Doing the things we love to do, those rare and precious indulgences that nothing can keep us away from, these things are what give us life … for me, there’s something particularly terrible when, in the random flash of an instant, they take it all back.

I suppose, however, that such is the risk of passion – the more we love something, the more power we give it to break our hearts.

Now that I’ve taken such a steep turn for the contemplative, I’m doing a lot more thinking than typing. Given that, I’ll go ahead and offer up a few of my favorite pictures of the day (those taken by me, that is), then roll the dice and see if tonight’s the night that I actually eke out more than 4 hours’ sleep.

Flight Sim cockpits setup in the KidVenture hangar at Pioneer Airport. No, I don’t have one of these at home, shut up.	The same sort of thing, but for bigger and wealthier kids – Redbird Simulations shows their nicely constructed and immersive cockpit.
It fits, and it matches my shirt, too.	I remembered today the first time I saw Jerry’s One Man Band – I was 21, and thought his setup was spectacularly ridiculous. 18 years later, I realized just how much I count on him parked at the corner of Vern & Knapp, year after year. I’ll probably buy one of his CD’s tomorrow.
There’s something so very promising about a biplane parked on the grass. Tailwheel airplanes have an optimistic stance and they sit literally looking up. That promise is somehow even richer at sunset: It isn’t the bold "let’s go, right now!" of a blue-gold sunny afternoon, but the warm aspirations of what’s possible tomorrow.	Serenity.

AirVenture, Day 2.

I woke up across the room, having leapt there to answer the nerve-shattering wake-up call while still asleep. The calls are automated, rung with impertinent precision by some kind of PhoneBot, so my groggy attempts at "hello", "yes, I’m up, okay … ", and "thank you, I’ve got to go get ready now" fell on … well, no ears at all. Once I’d sorted out who I was and just what I stood for, the day began to improve.

I took the first hour off from the Flight Sim booth in order to see the ceremonial first use of a batch of computers that were donated to the EAA by our friends at Intel, with a bit of help from EAA’s friends, us. The machines are setup in the EAA’s Flight Simulator lab and are to be used to run FSX as part of a number of their educational programs for visiting students. Brett attended, as did Aces alum Roy McMillion, and we were joined before long by our friend Dale "Snort" Snodgrass, a consummate aviator whose bio makes me feel so terribly inadequate that I’m going to conveniently forget to mention it here. This will catch up with me shortly.

Here’s a look at some of the PC’s in action, being wrung out by a group of kids from all over the US who are attending the EAA Air Academy:

My time at the booth brought with it the usual series of conversations, questions, connections, interviews, and even a reunion or two. And then, having brought those things, it scampered off before anyone noticed.

In cruising around the grounds, we came across a newly-nearly-restored P-38 Lightning making it’s official first AirVenture appearance. I say nearly-restored because the finishing touch – the application of the "Ruff Stuff" nose art commemorating the airplane flown in WWII by Wisconsin native Norbert Ruff, was taking place right there on the field, in front of an audience.

The tour of the grounds also found a lovely Australian Tiger Moth, about which I waxed authoritative and rhapsodic, while people whose room and board is being charged to my credit card did a credible job of feigning interest. You can see me in action on Roy’s blog, specifically in this shot.

A bit later on we spent a couple of hours watching the airshow from the decadent comfort of the "flightline pavilion", a combination of air conditioned buildings, an outside seating area, free drinks, and two rows of chairs under an awning on top of a trailer. I stole about a half an hour from the show catching up and strategerizing with my friend Ron Kaplan, executive director of the National Aviation Hall of Fame. He apologized for the fact that my name was misspelled "Hall" in this year’s program, and he felt doubly bad when I told him that the surplus "L" had happened last year, as well. I told him that I’d let him get away with it if he simply renamed his organization the National Aviation Hal of Fame. It wasn’t all that funny then, either.

Here’s a look at one of our designers, Brandon, and MVP Owen trying gamely to appear Very Important, as well as shot of the matching seating area just over from ours:

Later in the evening, after a premade-pulled-pork sandwich that actually had no discernible flavor whatsoever, we made our way to the so-called "Fly-In" theater, where the aforementioned "Snort" was going to be introducing the movie Top Gun. As it happens, Dale was an instructor at the titular school portrayed in the film (though, unlike Kelly McGillis’ character, he was a fighter pilot not an astrophysicist, so he actually had some useful information to pass along), and some of the broad character sketches of Tom Cruise’s Pete "Maverick" Mitchell character were based on him. We were sitting and waiting for the movie to start when Brett got a phone call, and ushered all of us into the VIP section of the screening. If you look closely at the picture, you can see that it was snapped during the scene when Goose ejects from the F-14 and, in a tragic miscalculation, is shot straight into the Sun:

From a practical standpoint, all this actually did was move us dramatically further from the screen, but the chairs were slightly more comfortable, and we were safely protected from the unwashed hordes of which we were so recently a part by a plastic picket fence. However, we were very well cared for and catered to, and I’m the first to admit that my vanity enjoys nothing so much as the chance to be on the other side of a fence from a lot of people. Besides, the company was good – Dale sat with us for a bit after he wrapped up his introduction of the film with a mention of the American Topgun Challenge, he gave a resounding plug for Flight Sim, and thanked us with considerable grace for attending. Getting a chance to talk to Francesco "Paco" Chierici and tell him exactly what we thought of his film Speed and Angels was an unexpected pleasure as well. (Note: we liked it.)

The contacts, the connections, the ideas, and the friendships continue to crackle and spark, and this was only day two, with five to go.

Oh, and a quick aside to Laurie Doering: In answer to your question, exactly what you’d think would happen at a Rubber Chicken party. And thanks for reading! 🙂

AirVenture, Day 1

I’m tired tonight, so I’ll let the pictures earn their keep. The story behind the last one may be better left to the imagination anyway.

AirVenture, Day 0. 

The booth setup today was almost eerily uneventful – most of the heavy lifting was done in advance, so all we really had to do was install a few bits of software.  Even Flight Simulator X was loaded, configured, and activated, sparing us the 6 minutes per PC of activating by phone. Beyond that, we needed to work out some speaker issues and beg for some controllers to sit in for the ones we shipped that haven’t found their way to us yet (thank you, once again, CH Products for filling in the gaps!).  

Then there was the small matter of the two 42" plasma monitors that we need for our display that, technically, none of us forgot to arrange for, since none of us ever even gave it the slightest thought in the first place. Thanks to the miracle of modern cellular telephone technology, and the brute force of a Microsoft Corporate American Express card, this problem was solved when a company in Madison, WI, rented us the last two they had. They brought them straight to the booth and mounted and configured them for us. I haven’t seen the bill, and I’ve a feeling I’ll wish I never did, but the show must go on … the roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd and all that.

The show has already renewed old friendships, and sparked a few new ones. Tomorrow, that process will accelerate dramatically, as more people arrive, and the gates officially open. There will be noise and action and rapid-fire conversations and things to see and questions to answer or deflect gracefully. A maelstrom of activity, paradoxically some of the greatest peace I know.

Tonight, though, was about finding something akin to quiet, about the closest I can come to the sort of contemplative relaxation that normal people find laying in silence on a beach. Far closer, perhaps, than the stolen title of this post suggests.

The afternoon and evening brought together a few of my very favorite things: a huge Midwestern sky with a great sunset, a golf cart full of good friends, miles of fully gawkable airplanes, and … someone who’d never been here before. I take a peculiar pleasure in being the person who has been some place amazing who can then, in turn, show it to someone else. It makes me feel like the drummer in That Thing You Do – "I led you here, sir, for I am Spartacus." 

If any among the handful of pictures I took sum up a day-zero Oshkosh evening, I think it was this one. I’m resisting calling it the "picture o’ the day", because I can’t guarantee that there will be a picture tomorrow, or that there won’t be another one in the middle of the night tonight. I’m just not ready for that kind of commitment. I’m resisting that, in fact, almost as hard as I’ve fought off the phrase "calm before the storm" in tonight’s post, spraying my keyboard with Cliche’-be-Gone.

With that, then, here is the official "Picture of the Right Now, My Favorite of all of the Ones Inserted Here at the End, No Warranties Given or Implied".

Solace, indeed:

And to prove it, we’re here …

The Super 8 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin … for one week every year, it is the second most desirable lodging in the world for pilots and aviation geeks as AirVenture begins.

My flight out from Sea-Tac was fairly uneventful – I had a three hour layover in the twin cities of Minneapolis & Not-Minneapolis. Dinner was a beer and a brisket sandwich, after which an enthusiastic waiter shook a bag of hot donuts at me for dessert. Two young kids played violin at the gate, having a very credible go at "Les Marseilles" – an odd choice, maybe, but it lent a certain … I do not know what. After Minneapolis, I headed to Milwaukee (which, according to Alice Cooper, means "the good land" in Algonquin), seated next to a doctor who was angry because women can’t give directions without discussing the way the elevators are decorated.

After landing and re-claiming (as opposed to simply claiming) my bag, I picked up the keys to my rental (a Grand Caravan with a Garmin glass cockpit, no less … built, rather sadly, by Dodge) and set out through Milwaukee on the drive to Oshkosh, trying to decide if I was more of a schlemiel or a schlimazel.

I found Owen at the motel, and checked in … before I’d said a word, one of the clerks said "You’re Hal Bryan! I was told to place this directly in your hand … " and handed me an official EAA tote bag that might as well (or mise well, if you prefer) have been the nuclear "football", given her dramatic timidity. I was flattered to be recognized, but, really, they’re only happy to see me because I’m the one paying for all the rooms for the week.

Owen and I left and picked up Justin Lamb and Mike Lambert at the Appleton airport, then I came back to stuff exhibitor badges and lanyards and sponsor passes and all manner of other trade show flotsam into envelopes to be left at the front desk for the rest of our team.

That took longer than it should have, and I’m really tired, but for some reason I decided to write this instead of just going to sleep.

Tomorrow is setup day, but rumor has it the lion’s share of the work is already done. All that really means is that the unforeseen disasters will have to be bigger than average in order to fill the available time.

Regardless, it is, as always, good to be back in America’s Dairyland. Unlike mountain ranges and things that surround us at home in the Pacific Northwest (America’s Barista), the terrain here is subtle, and just rolls along politely staying out of the way of the sky. It’s beautiful in its way – lush and green, but, especially here, and especially now, the sky’s the thing.

That seems like a half-pithy place to stop writing and go to sle