That the annual EAA AirVenture show offers a mouth-watering and impossible-to-swallow cornucopia of everything aviation was never more evident than at this year’s event, where a colossal Airbus A380 shared the ramp at AeroShell Square with Burt Rutan’s most outlandish creation yet, the spaceship-launching Virgin Galactic WhiteKnightTwo built by the talented crew at Scaled Composites. The two giants were joined by all the usual visitors and some other new arrivals, including the first-ever remotely flown UAV to land at Oshkosh, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection Predator B, whose operator flew in air-conditioned comfort in a trailer on the flight line while piloting the UAV to Wittman Regional Airport on July 14.
What EAA AirVenture truly has become is a perfect snapshot of an industry that is the heart of global aerospace, chronicling the up- and downcycles as entrepreneurs launch new enterprises or flame out spectacularly, providing a platform for new aircraft designs or resurrections of technologies that ran out of money and the will to see them through.
