The Dodge Boys Are In Town

The Boys from Dodge. The six Piper Cubs arrived at AirVenture 2000 flying in trail. They settled to the runway and rolled off into the grass. The six planes are flown by six friends from Dodge City, Kansas.

Dan Cammack, Leigh Crotts, Howie Cammack, Mark Krier, Bill Wall and J.B. Glassco have been coming to the fly-in as a group since 1993. From '93 to '95 they all rode up on Harley-Davidson motorcycles. In '96 they changed to flying in with the Cubs.

The group usually takes only two days to get to Oshkosh. This year they stopped for the night in the Wisconsin Dells to visit the Casino.

In past years Howie, who is Dan's Dad, came to the fly-in in his own plane. This year, in order to join the Cub pack, he had to get checked out in the Cub.

"Before coming up here my son had to give me a checkout," said the elder Cammick. "The trip here was my first solo in a Cub," he said with a big smile.

The gentleman was walking toward the Flight Line early one morning. He was comparing these Wisconsin sunrises to those back home in Arizona. He concluded that while the ones back home are often nice, you can't beat the sun rising over airplanes parked on the grass.

He spoke of the past, camping at the AirVenture campgrounds. "Last year cured me of camping," he says. "It was so hot. You'd be uncomfortable all day, then you'd go back to your tent and it would still be so hot you couldn't get comfortable. This year is a lot better though."

This gentleman is active back home with the group that puts on the Copperstate Fly-In. Here at AirVenture he volunteers by driving the Homebuilt Welcome Wagon. "It's pretty busy early on," he says. "Then it gets pretty quiet until Sunday and Monday when a whole new wave of people start arriving."

For the Van Dellen's, like so many others, AirVenture is a family activity. Phyllis, Ralph and daughter Terri Van Dellen Rausch, all work with the Telephone Pioneers of America. The Pioneers organization is made up of retired telephone company workers who are involved in all sorts of good works around the Oshkosh area.

At AirVenture they raise funds for their work by manning the "Programs Sold Here" booths around the grounds. When we spoke to them, Mom and Dad were selling from booths, while Terri walked around AeroShell Plaza hawking programs. Funds from these sales go to support the Pioneers' other activities.

Some of the Telephone Pioneer's other activities include Little Bears, a program to support and comfort child victims who have to testify in court, and also to various roadside cleanup projects.

For most of us, flying to Oshkosh once a year is the longest flight we'll ever attempt. But Henri Chorosz would probably consider that just a local hop. You see Henri has made a specialty of doing extremely long, non-stop flights in his highly modified Glasair II FT-S.

As a child Henri was inspired by the transatlantic flight of Charles Lindbergh, so his first "long cross country" was a re-creation of that historic flight from New York to Paris. Since then he's made flights from New York to Cannes... Dakar to Lakeland, Florida... Hilo, Hawaii to Oshkosh.

Earlier this year Henri flew non-stop from Hilo to Lakeland, and he arrived here at AirVenture after a non-stop flight from Nome, Alaska.

Henri used to register his long flights as official World Records, but he's made so many of them now that he can no longer afford all the registration fees involved.

Although so far Henri's flights have never involved any serious mishaps, he does tell of numerous scares along the way. Enroute from Nome he encountered icing conditions. While descending out of the icing, the build-up on one of his three prop blades came off resulting in vibrations so severe that he feared that he had completely lost one of the blades. Fortunately the remaining blades soon cleared, and the vibration stopped.

Next spring Henri plans to fly non-stop from Hawaii to Bangor Maine. But his big upcoming flight is a round the world trip in late 2001 (not non-stop of course) where he plans to pass over both the North and South poles.

After the Polar flight Henri says he plans to stop for awhile. "At least that's what my wife would like," he says.

Henri's Glasair is parked on the grass just east of the archway near the control tower.