Made by the Ford Motor Company, a 1927 Ford Trimotor gets ready for another day of flying passengers at EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin                   Photo by Gene Korte

Every year in the US there are 450 to 500 air shows, but none is more celebrated than EAA AirVenture Oshkosh. It’s a mecca for homebuilts, experimental planes and those crazy wing-walkers and acrobatic aerial aces.

It’s a state fair kind of place, including booths selling cotton candy,  located near the waters of Lake Winnebago.  Over a week’s time more than a half million visitors arrive, many in campers or as fly-ins in their own planes, with numerous pilots and passengers camping beneath a wing during their stay. No, there aren’t remotely enough motel rooms for everyone in this town of about 65,000. Non-camping visitors rent rooms – like we did – in locals’  homes, in college dorms, or find a place further away. The website helps you do this, http://www.eaa.org.

In Oshkosh there is as much to see on the ground as there is in the air. In the display area of this 1,400-acre aviation hot spot were many old favorites, including hundreds of World War II planes known as Warbirds and the Super Connie, a propeller-powered plane of the 1950s that some enthusiasts consider the most beautiful airliner ever built.

Unlike the fashion attire of suits and ties at the bi-annual Paris Air Show (world’s oldest and largest aviation business event), visitors to Oshkosh are dressed in shorts and T-shirts and hopefully good walking shoes, as there’s so much ground to cover. Families stream in all day. When they’re not looking up to the sky in the afternoon to watch the fly-bys of military planes that make a pass or two and then leave the area or the aerobatic teams, they cruise the big display areas on the grounds.

The 2017 dates for this event are July 24-July 30 at Wittman Regional Airport.