By Vic Syracuse, EAA Lifetime 180848

This piece originally ran in Vic’s Checkpoints column in the November 2023 issue of EAA Sport Aviation magazine.

We’ve been going to EAA Oshkosh since 1981, and our mode of travel has varied widely over the course of those years. The best trips have been in the RV-10, as we usually arrive early afternoon, after an easy flight from Atlanta to Oshkosh with a stop in Lafayette, Indiana, for lunch.

Over the years we’ve done everything from arriving prior to the NOTAM being in effect to flying the Fisk Arrival procedure to arriving on an instrument flight plan. As I mentioned in last month’s column, this year’s plan was to arrive in the helicopter, not by towing it. For me, towing an airplane to EAA AirVenture Oshkosh just seems sacrilegious.

From the start, I knew this would be quite the adventure and require a whole new level of preparation and planning. I spent a lot of time on maintenance to ensure the Hummingbird helicopter would be reliable, and I tried hard to get as much time on it as I could prior to leaving. The broken rotor shaft I shared in last month’s column put a little wrinkle in preparations, but I was confident we had found the smoking gun and eliminated that from recurring.

Brad Clark from Vertical Aviation was driving up from Sanford, Florida. He mentioned he would carry some spare parts in his truck. But, after lots of discussion, we couldn’t think of any spares to carry. I figured it would be about 25 hours of flying for the round trip, so I performed an oil change a couple of days prior to departure and made a couple of flights on it.

I had flown up to Lexington, Kentucky, earlier in the week in the RV-10 and had closely watched the view from 8,000 feet to look for the best routing in the helicopter. I saw some nice passes across the hills between Atlanta and middle Tennessee that would keep me below 2,500 feet MSL. Helicopters aren’t made to fly high.

The Hummingbird is placarded to reduce airspeed by 4 knots for every 1,000 feet above sea level to avoid retreating blade stall. The helicopter was already slow enough without having to slow down more.

Weather would be another factor on the trip. At a cruise speed of 75-80 knots, there isn’t much extra speed to go around fronts or thunderstorms, and it was thunderstorm season in the southeast.

From flight testing, I had determined that two hours of cruise time would give me 30-45 minutes of fuel remaining upon landing. Yes, I know helicopters only require 20 minutes for VFR, but I am not comfortable with that.

I also wanted to keep the legs reasonable so that Carol would enjoy the trip. Unlike cruising up high in the cool and smooth air in the RV-10, we were going to be down in the heat and bumps in the Hummingbird.

For my flight planning to OSH, I start watching the weather forecasts and trends about two weeks prior to our planned departure. The weather patterns this year showed a good VFR window beginning on Sunday the week before to the event, with a planned trip time of nine-plus hours spread out over two days. We decided to leave on Sunday, and if we could make Lafayette, we would have all the weather behind us. Interestingly, the usual Lafayette lunch stop was now an overnight stop.

A funny thing happened on Sunday morning after I pushed the helicopter out of the hangar. After removing the tow bar and securing it in the hangar, I walked back to the helicopter, and sitting there right in front of it was the biggest tortoise I have ever seen. I couldn’t tell if it was a harbinger of the trip to come, or if he was just smugly smiling at me for thinking only he was slow. I gently moved him into the grass, and he sat there until we left. I didn’t ask where he was headed, and he didn’t offer to race me to OSH.

Early morning flights in the helicopter are nice. The air is smooth and cool, and due to our direction, the sun was mostly at our backs. The first planned stop for Crossville, Tennessee, was cut short due to headwinds, and we landed in Cleveland, Tennessee. The view in the helicopter from 800 to 1,200 feet is much different than the view in the RV-10 from 10,000 feet. But one also must be careful to watch out for towers, as many times they are higher than you are flying. The map in the Advanced Flight Systems electronic flight instrument system (EFIS) highlights the towers in red and yellow, and I found that most useful during the entire trip.

Unfortunately, the smoke from the Canadian fires impacted us from the middle of Tennessee to about 15 miles south of Chicago. It really put a damper on the sightseeing. Visibility was about 3 miles or less the entire time. At one point, just south of Lafayette, we went by a thunderstorm a few miles off to our left side that ATC was warning everyone about. We saw it on the ADS-B weather but never saw it visually. In the morning, the visibility at Lafayette was less than 1/4 mile, so we waited a couple of hours for it to improve to 3 miles.

We were concerned that we would miss a great view of Chicago due to the smoke, but it cleared up nicely just about 10 minutes south of Chicago. I’ve always tried to treat Carol to the Chicago skyline view along the lake shore, weather permitting, but we are usually higher and farther offshore.

In the helicopter, I was able to keep us at 1,000 feet and close to the shoreline. With the early morning sunshine, it was a real treat. Carol enjoyed it, somewhat cynically remarking that she got to see a whole lot more for a whole lot longer.

We continued to follow the shoreline all the way north past Milwaukee to Manitowoc, Wisconsin, where we decided to take a break for a few days since we were so early. It had been a sweltering summer in Atlanta so far, and the cool 60-degree morning in Manitowoc had us wondering if we had gone to Alaska.

As most pilots flying to OSH know, complete familiarization with the NOTAM is an absolute must. I had scoured it looking for the helicopter arrival procedures and really couldn’t find any appropriate to a display aircraft. So, I decided to arrive prior to the NOTAM, which meant arriving sometime prior to noon on Thursday.

Luckily, the weather cooperated. The wonderful folks in Manitowoc even found some hangar space for us on Wednesday night since some rain was forecasted. We departed at 9:30 a.m., arriving at OSH around 10:30 a.m. I was given a straight in to Runway 27, with a sidestep to the Basler ramp. No green dot for me this time.

We had to wait until Saturday to reposition over to the display area, which meant landing near Boeing Plaza. I called ground control and told them I would do whatever worked best for them, including a ground taxi, since I had wheels. To my surprise, I was told to depart east and follow the shoreline south to midfield. Tower would then turn us into Boeing Plaza. What a treat. It’s the best view of AirVenture I’ve ever had. We even had to do two orbits east of the runway, and then we were cleared to follow an RV-10 into Boeing Plaza, which ended up being Rob Hickman from Advanced Flight Systems.

All said and done, it was a fun trip. Total flight time up was 11.3 hours due to headwinds, and the return trip was around 9.6 with a little tailwind. We had a great view of Chicago again on the way home. The smoke was gone for the return trip, but not the heat.

The Hummingbird was reliable, as I had hoped it would be, and we really enjoyed talking to everyone about it. Flying a helicopter to AirVenture certainly added a different fun factor to the list.

Vic Syracuse, EAA Lifetime 180848, is a commercial pilot, A&P/IA mechanic, designated airworthiness representative, and EAA flight advisor and technical counselor. He has built 11 aircraft and has logged more than 10,000 hours in 74 different types. Vic founded Base Leg Aviation, has authored books on maintenance and prebuy inspections, and posts videos weekly on his YouTube channel. He also volunteers as a Young Eagles pilot.