It's been a busy few days in Oshkosh. The flight in on Monday morning went extremely smoothly, with very little traffic. We had expected it to be pandemonium, with heavy traffic, planes cutting in front from left and right, and likely holding pattern at Green and Rush Lakes. But, we only say a handful of other aircraft, and it didn't really get busy until we were on base leg, when suddenly there was a conflict between two landing aircraft ahead of us, and some faster traffic coming up behind us. Tower first wanted us (flight of four RVs) to land long, then they wanted us land on the button, then they wanted a long landing again. Then they asked a Cessna ahead of us to go around, as he was about to land on top of another aircraft.

Our lead RV misunderstood the final instruction from ATC, and he landed at the button, did a very short roll out, and then turned off at the first taxiway, which put him beak to beak with a few dozen aircraft trying to take-off. The rest of us realized that wasn't what ATC wanted, so we landed long and taxiied in to the camping area without lead. We saved a spot for him, and he came taxiing in about 20 minutes later.

We're camped between Brian and Marg Carr (RV-8 with 434 Sqn motif), and George and Elsie McNutt (RV-7A painted in a very fetching chartreuse. Brian is working on his tenth RV. He built several RV-4s, including one with retractable landing gear, several Harmon Rockets, and an RV-9A for Marg to fly. He is currently working on a Harmon Rocket with retractable landing gear. Chris and Joan Cox's RV-7 is parked on the other side of Brian and Marg's RV-8.

On Monday Terry and I set up camp, had lunch, registered our aircraft and tent, and went to an RV-8 builder's get together. On Tuesday we attended a forum by Jessica Cox, a young lady pilot who was born without arms, and did a whole bunch of walking around. Tuesday evening we went to the Van's Aircraft banquet. A cold front with thunderstorms went through overnight Tuesday night. It rained pretty hard for a while, but the tent didn't leak, there was no hail, and I don't think any aircraft got damaged.

Wednesday morning we went through some of the vendor displays and checked out many of the RV-8s in the parking area, looking for good ideas to steal to improve the cockpit. There are some very, very nice RVs here.

I also bought a Trio Pro Pilot autopilot. I currently have a very agricultural single-axis Navaid Devices wing leveler. It works well enough, but it sure would be nice to have altitude hold when doing long legs, especially when flying IFR. The Trio autopilots are compatible with the Navaid Devices servo, and unlike some other popular autopilots they completely disconnect from the flight controls when they are not active.