SATURDAY, AUGUST 2, 2014
PHOTO BY JACK HODGSON
Daniel and Rick McClellan with Rick’s Cessna 170.
“I got my demo flight, and now I am absolutely convinced I did the right thing in buying that ultralight,” Jim concluded. Rick McClellan flew to AirVenture 2014 from his home airport of Poplar Grove, Illinois. It’s his 28th time attending Oshkosh. Poplar Grove is a small but active airport. “It has two nice manicured grass strips and one paved runway,” Rick described. There’s a variety of planes based there, including antiques, Cubs, old Cessnas, Beech 18s. “One guy is rebuilding a T-6,” he said. Rick came to OSH14 with his son Daniel, who is a pilot for a regional airline flying Embraer 145s out of Chicago’s O’Hare International. Daniel’s been coming to the fly-in since he was 5 years old. At age 14 he also attended EAA’s Air Academy summer program. This year father and son flew into Oshkosh in Rick’s 1952 Cessna 170B. He only bought it last August, so this is his first time bringing it to AirVenture. When they arrived on Saturday morning it was kind of quiet at Fisk. “The Fisk controllers were bored,” Rick says, “so they said, ‘OK if anybody
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wants to talk on the radio it’s fine.’ One controller said, ‘Ah, nice looking airplane. How long have you had it?’ We were just kind of chatting. And then he said, ‘OK we’re done talking now, hang up your mics, and don’t talk anymore. And you’re cleared to land on 27.’” When Rick bought the red-on-silver 170 last summer he got the seller to fly it from Sturgis, South Dakota, to Illinois for a pre-buy inspection. After Rick agreed to buy the plane he loaded up himself, the seller, and an instructor, and flew the seller back to Sturgis. So a pretty long cross-country flight was his first experience in the airplane. The 170 is on wheels now, but in the winter he attaches skis, and has a whole different kind of experience. “The world is your runway,” he said. One of Daniel’s most vivid memories of his childhood trips to Oshkosh was the year the family traveled here only to discover they’d arrived a week early. “So we set up the tent in Camp Scholler and came back the next week.” For more “Around the Field” visit www.aroundthefield.net or follow @aroundthefield on twitter.