On Flight – Oshkosh, Leesburg, and Kitty Hawk

Through the year I've had a bit of an opportunity to connect with a former flame – flight.

In July of this year, we spent a week at Oshkosh, at the EAA Airventure. This is an annual 'Woodstock for planes' that was on my dad's bucket list. For the week, the local airfield, Wittman is the busiest control tower in the world – averaging over 100 takeoffs and landings per hour (!). There were over 10k aircraft in attendance, and rows and rows of people camped out under their aircraft.

The airshows were also pretty spectacular. And the night fireworks, with drones, and actual flights - I had never seen anything like it.

I had over the prior month or so started my own flying lessons, with a view to seeing how much progress I could make before we headed back to Singapore. The FAA Private Pilot License, once granted, is valid for life (medical and currency checks apply of course), so this is what I was shooting for. Turns out this will take me longer than the time we have left here, so this will become another item on my todo list for the next decade. While getting the license isn't something I was able to complete, I am glad to have completed my first solo flight, as well as a number of hours flying around Leesburg solo. Gotta say, Leesburg, Martinsburg, Winchester, and other small towns in the DMV area are great to fly into.

That's part of the reason we ended up spending a bit more time Leesburg – my flying school was based here, about an hour out of DC. I'm torn, I want to head back to complete my cross country flights, review and schedule my exam (checkride), but there is so much to see on our trip, and I don't want to have us rush through the vast landscapes of CONUS (that's continental United States, for you landlubbers non-aviation focus)