I am awash in new technology here in the man cave. New to me, that is, probably about 10-15 years old to most of you. I have a new car, a new smart phone and a new navigation app to play with. And I hope to have the ultimate in geek eye candy once I arrive – hundreds or thousands of planes arriving for the world’s largest airshow (by … volume? I dunno, but I’ve heard the claim many times).
The adventure starts tonight with my new smart phone and my new app. I’m going to take the phone offline and plot the route, and tomorrow I’m going to follow the instructions step by step (and it’s claimed it can read the instructions aloud while still offline) and see if it stands up. I found the app, HERE by Nokia,as a result of this thread.
My new car is a Mazda 3 and I’ve been having so much fun with it that I’ve actually doubled the amount of driving I do, compared to my last car. I had my last car for 13 years and I stayed pretty close to 5,000 miles a year, and I had a very brief commute of about 5 miles a day. Now, in 7 months I put on 7,000 miles, and now I have no commute miles at all to speak of. This travel rate makes me a pretty average driver, except the great majority of my driving is recreational.
I’m going to pick a spot on the map that looks to have the best view of the approaches to the main runways. My biggest deciding issue is whether to put myself to the east or west side of the big north-south runway. EAA is going to live stream their ATC so I should get a clue from that.
And I have a pretty damn good Canon Rebel XSI camera to mess with, an extra battery, and a shiny new 32 gig memory card. And a decent tripod.
Maybe I’ll get lucky and catch some practicing acrobatic teams too.
My biggest concerns are overexposure to the sun and dehydration if I’m out there too long.
Have a good time and share some pics when you get back.
That sucker is just across the lake from me but I have work-duties to attend to, so I am kinda envious dag nabbit.
I have good news and bad news. The good news is the the nav system worked like a champ. I planted the nav point right on top of the west end of the east-west runway, and it brought me onto the street closest to it with verbal directions. This despite being detoured off the plotted route by a road closing. As I left the route it kept re-plotting and feeding me new directions to head toward the target at hand. After a bit I started following it’s directions again, and it took me exactly where I wanted too.
I’m probably over-impressed, but this is the first drive I’ve ever done relying on computer navigation.
The bad news is the smashing of my illusions of the fly-in. I expected a steady stream of arriving aircraft, other planes maybe taking short hops, and maybe some others practicing formations or aerobatics. And in two hours I saw 5 aircraft in the air, and one of them was the same old bubble nose Bell helicopter, selling rides I think.
It looked like perhaps hundreds of small planes lined up at the field, and I can only guess that the veterans of the show would have learned not to come in so late as the day before. .So I didn’t take any pictures worth sharing.
All is not lost. When the show ends there is a mass exodus of airplanes. Just like at a big arena event, the arrivals are spread over a long while but everybody bolts for the exits immediately when it’s over.
As to east or west of the runway, that depends on what time of day you’re active. better to be taking pix with the sun at your back. So be on the east side in the morning and west side in the afternoon.
