Lone Eagle Group: Oshkosh 2025

By Carol Browne

Unfortunately, just one 'Wow' fails abysmally to do justice to this totally amazing event. So… wow, wow, wow!!!

Thirteen intrepid adventurers formed the Lone Eagle Group, a loose assortment of pilots, family and friends including Russell and Annette Denyer from our club and the CEO and the Chair of RAAus. We all stayed at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh campus student accommodation. We all owe Trevor Bange a huge debt of gratitude for organising this because it was a very frustrating and challenging process. Whole new procedures were in place. The staff handling the bookings were all new, the processes and procedures kept changing, and the rooms available seemed to be shifting on a regular basis. It all worked out in the end and I am sure Trevor heaved a very big sigh of relief when the final confirmations came through.

The 2025 Oshkosh EAA AirVenture, the largest fly-in convention on the planet was held from July 21-27. Some of our group arrived the day before to watch the constant stream of aircraft arriving at Wittman Regional Airport. Just to give you a few stats, (all these courtesy of the EAA website) about 10,000 planes flew in and there were about 704,000 aviation enthusiasts who attended over the course of the convention, a new record. There was an absolutely amazing array of show planes with every imaginable category represented. 75 Aerobatic aircraft, 74 seaplanes, 9 balloons, 18 rotorcraft, 361 awesome warbirds, 995 vintage aircraft, 101 ultralights, 910 homebuilds and 2 Goodyear blimps. So more than 2,500 in total. You would need a month to even begin to get around and see them all.

There were also nearly a thousand commercial exhibitors and so many seminars and workshops numbering in their thousands over the week. It took me an hour to just review the days offerings to work out what I wanted to see. Frequently, I found for each time slot there were 4 or 5 offerings that I would have loved to attend, mainly focussing  around safety, aerodynamics, human factors and Women Venture.

It was a real treat for me to be able to see the all-female crew land an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max to participate in Women Venture activities and meet and talk with the crew. Their mission: to inspire, uplift, and open doors for the next generation of women in aviation.

A large variety of military and commercial aircraft arrived, stayed a couple of days and left. We were able to get on board and have a look around many of them if you didn’t mind a bit of a queue.  Watching a C17 reverse down the runway under reverse thrust in very close proximity was a sight that enthralled the crowds and certainly something I had not seen before.  One of the highlights of the week for a few of us was a flight in the Ford Trimotor which took us out over Lake Winnebago and over the parked aircraft and camping areas which gave us a true perspective of how massive the event is.

Then there were the air shows every afternoon with dazzling displays of formation flying, aerobatics, military war play featuring explosions that rattled the windows and even  a comedy routine. The night shows were just an absolute feast which included fireworks, amazing drone light shows and lit up aircraft performing aerobatics in amongst the fireworks’ bursts. Just gob-smacking.

There were over 2300 international visitors from 94 countries. We Aussies were very well represented (about 230 of us) with only 2 or 3 visitors less than the very large South African contingent who came in at number one. Interestingly, there was a huge drop in the number of Canadian visitors who took out the trophy when we were here in 2023. Probably don’t have to dig too deep to figure out the reason for that one. There were nearly 6,000 volunteers contributing nearly 300,000 hours.

Photo: Flight Radar screen shot of aircraft lined up on final for arrival at Oshkosh, and this was the quiet time of the afternoon

The EAA Society has an aviation museum on site at OSHKOSH that is also very good and forms part of the Experimental Association America headquarters that is at OSHKOSH. Trevor had a wonderful time especially catching up with several other Porterfield owners. A bit of interesting trivia we came across at the EAA Museum on site was that the founder of EAA in 1955, Paul Paberezny, did his first solo on 13^th May 1939 in the same model Porterfield as Trevor’s.

Trevor and I were fortunate in that we got to spend two amazing days at the Smithsonian Udvar-Hazy Centre at the National Air and Space Museum at Chantilly, just near Dulles Washington airport. Once again, so many aircraft , exhibits, movies and tours that you would need a week to see and do it all. Consider it a must on your “bucket list”.

We also visited the Ford Museum in Detroit - an indoors museum and then the outdoor Greenfield museum.

So... Are we going back next year? Absolutely! Three of us have our tickets booked already.

Dates for next year are July 20-26, 2026. It is an aviator’s paradise.  If you are interested in joining the Lone Eagle Group for the greatest aviation show on earth and to see aviation in its greatest form, let Trevor or me know. You must allow at least 4 days at OSHKOSH and include either the Wednesday or Saturday night shows.

The more the merrier!

A few views of Chicago

The EAA Society museum at OSHKOSH