EAA’s Aviation Museum in Oshkosh is definitely worth a visit

February 16th, 2008 at 09:09am Chuck Sweeny

Many years ago, the Experimental Aircraft Association, a group of aviation enthusiasts who like to build and fly their own airplanes, had their annual event , the EAA Fly-In, at what was then the Greater Rockford Airport. My dad was an amateur radio operator, and his group used to operate a mobile message center at the fly-in, so I spent a lot of time out there as a kid. (There were no mobile phones back then.)

The event got so big that the airport leaders of that day believed they couldn’t handle it anymore. The fly-in moved to Wittman Field in Oshkosh. I’d never had occasion to go there until Friday when I had to cover John McCain’s Republican campaign for president. The EAA, I discovered, has its world headquarters and 200 employees in Oshkosh.

There are over 170,000 EAA members worldwide, about 150,000 in the U.S.

The EAA has a beautiful headquarters at the airport. They also have a spectacular tourist attraction, an aviation museum that has a civilian wing and a military wing that focuses on World War II aviation. There are interactive displays; it’s a lot more than just static displays of aircraft. I particularly enjoyed replicas of the Wright Brothers first airplane, a P-51 Mustang, a Spitfire, a Wright mail plane, and various experimental planes from decades past.

It’s definitely worth a visit, and it’s easy to find. Visit them at www.eaa.org

The EAA AirVenture, as the fly-in is now known, has 10,000 planes nowadays. This year, it’s from July 28 to August 3, featuring war-birds, ultralights, light-sport aircraft, float-planes, aerobatics, homebuilts and vintage airplanes.

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