Van's Air Force
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Welcome to Oshkosh, just kidding, turn left
- Thread starter Steve
- Start date
"...Turn left. The field is closed for an RV mass arrival." !!!!!!! Wow, solution / problem? No reason in the world that they should have closed the field, but if that is how it is going to go, we should be aware of it and be part of the real solution. None the less, it DID happen. ATC closed the whole arrival ("30-45 minutes") because 30 RVs were approaching in a coordinated fashion. Unacceptable any way you cut it.
I was in the air orbiting outside RIPON when this happened. My understanding that there were a Mass RV Arrival but there was also 100 Mooney mass arrival and a 150 Bonanza mass arrival also. In other words, just under 300 airplanes landed in three mass arrivals in just over 30-minutes. That is almost 10 airplanes per minute landing. In the last 19 times I have flown into AirVenture, not sure I have seen more than 5 or 6 airplanes per minute that were not in a Mass Arrival and that was landing on 3 different runways The mass arrivals were landing on one runway.
IMHO, in addition to the IFR limiting the number of hours the airport was open, the rain made some of the normal procedures of turning south off runway 09/27 impossible for taxi in the grass. This increased landing spacing between aircraft that now had to turn off runway 09/27 to the north then arriving traffic needed to be held or gaps created so that traffic that was on the north side of 09/27 could taxi across to the south HBP, HBC, Vintage, and South 40 parking areas.
The controllers did a great job with all the limitations placed on them by weather, field conditions, and stupid pilot tricks of pilots not following instructions. Easy to understand why the controllers have 8-hours of training before AirVenture and are repeatedly told not to get mad at pilots.
The holding Sunday afternoon was extremely dangerous. After 2.5 hours of extreme and intense torture, I diverted to KATW. I don't know the solution, but something needs to change. Plan to go much earlier next year ...or perhaps go in IFR early in the morning....or perhaps just write off OSH and fly into KATW. As far as mass arrivals, I'd vote to keep all Experimental mass arrivals but stop doing the certificated aircraft mass arrivals. (Note, I'm flying a certificated aircraft now .... and building an RV7a....so I'm including myself in this recommendation). It's a miracle no one was killed Sunday afternoon.
Ellis
Final Approach Aviation LLC
A&P/IA
Grumman AA5B
RV7a Tip-up Canopy phase (UGH!)
Ellis
Final Approach Aviation LLC
A&P/IA
Grumman AA5B
RV7a Tip-up Canopy phase (UGH!)
