Oshkosh 2003

There were a lot of these flying dinghies. Light but not ultralight?

A powered parachute buggy on a trailer and a motor-glider with a motor that folds away.

Ultralight camping.	A pusher gets you out in the clean air	where you can see everything.

An excellent aerodynamics class. In another class the teacher asked, "Who here owns a MIG-21?" and a bunch of people raised their hands. I didn't know an individual could own a supersonic fighter jet.

An airplane junkyard in a tent. Most of the fleamarket stalls sold stuff unrelated to airplanes. Tshirt vendors who go from state fair to powwow to drag race. Really horrible crap mostly. But there were a few good ones like this.

Composite airplanes designed by Burt Rutan. He's always been a hero of mine. Very practical yet unconventional designs for homebuilt composite airplanes. John Denver died in one of these when he ran out of gas and couldn't switch on the reserve tank. How do you deal with that? It wasn't Burt's fault. His safety philosophy is "question, never defend".

His brother Dick (in red hat) flew one of his planes around the world without refueling. That's twice the distance that any other plane has flown. Now Burt's got his own space program competing for the X-prize. By the time you read this he'll probably have won. His total budget is less than the cost of two hours of Nasa Space Shuttle time. And your taxes don't pay for it.

The Dyke Delta, a thirty year old design that's still ahead of its time. The experts kept mentioning it and here it is. Also shown are some of the 700,000 people who came to the show in the course of the week. It wasn't too many. The main runway is 8000 ft. long.

Airshow every day. This is a 1940's era biplane with a 2000lb thrust jet engine bolted underneath. Goes straight up with a guy standing on the wing and makes a hell of a racket. Interrupted all the classes, but most of the people really like the sound of an airplane.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Woodstock Sailplane.

Handmade from wood, silent. No engine at all. Build your own.

Very tiny. It's a french "Cri-cri". Two chainsaw engines. I'd love to see it fly. (update 2008 - do a video search. They fly well.)

Experimental pulse detonation engine in a Rutan Vari-Eze. Don't let your fifteen-year old see it. Takeoff speed of 90mph or so.

It's going to fly at Mojave. Sounds like a machinegun, which is basically what it is.

Uses the head and manifold from a car.

The A-10 "Warthog" tank-killer. The pilot sits in a titanium armored bathtub. 20mm gatling-gun cannon in the nose. The recoil of the cannon will stop the plane if you don't hit the gas at the same time. Shoots uranium bullets. They melt on impact and blast a hole in the tank's armor, squirting burning uranium inside. We shot 30,000 of these shells in Kosovo. We shot far more in Iraq. The uranium oxide dust is very toxic, far worse than familiar heavy metals like lead or mercury. It gets in the groundwater and vegetables. Many Iraqi kids near these battlefields are born deformed and die of cancer. When our regime-change is complete they're going to sue the hell out of us and we'll have to sell our national parks back to casino Indians to pay the damages.

Wright-Curtiss trainer from 1931. Looks like planes that'll be designed in 2031.

A British woman is flying around the world to raise pledge money for charity. She could have stayed at home for charity and burned five thousand fewer gallons of gas. That's prince Charles' signature on her wing in case you'd like to write checks to your favorite charity using his name.

U2 spy plane, this one is civilian which means they took out the secret electronics and painted a stripe on it. These planes are getting scarce and sometimes the spooks borrow it back. Notice the titanium skids on the wingtips. It's got bicycle-style landing gear to save weight and space, and the wings actually drag on landing. For takeoff there are little wagons that fall away.

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