The Night Air Show and Fireworks at EAA AirVenture
Some things you just have to go see in person, even if you are watching from a distance.
Saturday night I went down to Oshkosh for the closing night of EAA AirVenture. If you are not from the Fox Valley, AirVenture is the big one. Every July the Experimental Aircraft Association takes over Wittman Regional Airport and puts on what is, with no exaggeration, the largest aviation gathering in the world. Hundreds of thousands of people come through over the course of the week, and the field fills up with everything from little home-built experimentals to restored warbirds to modern military jets. For that one week every summer, the control tower in Oshkosh becomes the busiest one on the planet.
This year it ran July 20 through 26, and Saturday the 25th was the last big night. There are two night air shows during the week, one on Wednesday and one on Saturday, and the Saturday show is the finale, the one built around the fireworks. That was the one I wanted to catch.
I did not go onto the grounds. I stood out on the street, a little ways off from the field, and the view was still excellent. The jets came through first, and they were loud, the kind of loud you feel in your chest more than hear with your ears. I am pretty sure one of them was an F-22 Raptor. Whatever it was, it was intense, and the sound rolled all the way across town to where I was standing.
Then the fireworks started, and they did not hold anything back. It was a warm, calm night, so the smoke hung in the air and lit up with every burst, gold and purple and red stacked on top of each other. There was even a lit set piece down on the ground that spelled out the AirVenture name. A proper send-off for the week. It had been a good summer for fireworks around here, coming a few weeks after the Fourth of July show over the Neenah harbor.
Here is a couple of minutes of it. Turn the sound up.
I have lived near Oshkosh most of my life, and AirVenture is one of those things that is easy to take for granted when it is right in your backyard, the same way a quiet spot like Asylum Point across town is. Standing out on that street Saturday night, with the jets shaking the air and the sky full of fireworks, I was reminded that people fly in from all over the world for this. The rest of us just get to drive down the road.
