Here is an excerpt from Volume One of "Around the Field: The stories of the people places and planes of the Oshkosh Fly-in". Excerpt from Wednesday July 29, 1998.
Hey mate! Let's go to Oshkosh. John Murray had been thinking about it for a few years, so finally this year he and Kevin Green jumped into John's Bonanza F33A in Moree, New South Wales, Australia and flew to Oshkosh '98.
They replaced the back seats with two 77 gallon tanks and headed off, through New Guinea, The Marshall Islands, Hawaii, California, and on to Oshkosh.
In New Guinea they missed the recent tidal waves by a day. In Hawaii they calculated that the headwinds would run them out of gas before reaching the mainland, so they went to a hardware store and bought three 5-gallon cans and two hand pumps ("One as a backup, just in case"). They filled them with gas and headed out. No worries, mate
John and Kevin are ag pilots back home. They spray cotton fields at night. Ironically Kevin had a reservation to come to Oshkosh '98 on the Oshkosh Express 747, but John made him a better offer.
So, 53 flying hours, 5,513 nautical miles, and 3,140 liters of fuel later... Welcome to Oshkosh.
Walter and Pat Atkinson arrived at Oshkosh '98 from Ryan Airport in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in their comfortable, twin-engined C45H named the "Dame Milkstool".
The plane started life in 1942 as an AT-11 that was used for training bombardiers in Midland, Texas. In 1952 it was rebuilt to become the C-45H, also known as a Beech 18. In 1964 the conventional gear plane was converted to tricycle gear (milkstool, get it?).
"When I was six years old," recalls Walter, "I saw one of these take off from my local airport, and I said 'I'm gonna own one someday.' It took me 41 years, but I did it."
Walter and Pat came to the fly-in this year via Michigan, where they got their float plane ratings. Walter can be found as an active member of the AVSIG section of CompuServe.
Learn more about Volume One of "Around the Field: The stories of the people places and planes of the Oshkosh Fly-in" and other books about AirVenture, the Oshkosh Fly-in here.
General Aviation, Flying, Airplanes, EAA, Experimental Aircraft Association, Wittman Field
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