Hi Jay,

We had a great time at your party and the show. We decided to get an early start, and launched about
8:00 am, well ahead of your flight of 9. We had some scud-running to do between Madison and
Oshkosh, but no significant traffic problems. We tried camping in Vintage this year, and it worked out
great. We were in row 99, right across from the ultralight runway, and parked just one plane away from
Runway 36L. We had a great view of the A-380 landing. Yes, it was very "firm".

"Jay Honeck" wrote:

Then the floodgates opened, and the field filled to capacity by Monday
night. It was great! However, the expected "2nd Wave" of arrivals
(that comes in after you "early-mid-week-leavers" depart) never
materialized. By Thursday attendance was way down -- by the weekend,
we were literally one of three planes parked in an area where 60
planes were parked on Tuesday.

It was a different story in Vintage. Quite a few people left on Wednesday morning, and by Wednesday
afternoon, we had a whole new set of neighbors. The line crew did a good job of finding and back-filling
the empty places, so there was no appreciable open space when we left Thursday morning.

All in all, it was a MUCH better year than expected. Our pool party
was a complete blow-out, the flight up was terrific, and the Wednesday
night North 40 party was very well attended.

Sorry we didn't make the N40 party. Just too far from the vintage area, plus we had food to finish and
camp to clean up for our Thursday departure.

This was also the coolest OSH ever for us -- we wore long pants and sweatshirts for the
first time!

No kidding. The weather was great. It's good sleeping when it's cool enough to actually use the
sleeping bag!

Overall, we enjoyed the different experience in the vintage area, compared to previous N40 camping.
It's definitely closer to the show than N40, and good view of the daily airshow right from our camp. My
only complaint was the showers. In our area there were only 8 showers covering the entire south end
of the vintage area, and no sinks. There were lines as early as 5:30 am. They definitely need to
improve that - the showers in N40 are much better. Also, there's very limited electricity access, unlike
the shower building in N40 with all the outlets. I tried the wi-fi a few times on my laptop and had trouble
getting connected, but didn't really pursue it since I didn't have a good place to recharge.

We departed Thursday morning, spent the night with relatives in Colorado, and then back to Arizona
on Friday. 20 hours total flight time.

Regards,
Mike