You Can Fly: A grand adventure

Meanwhile, Keller had been out of the cockpit 20 to 25 years. Before he met Rogal, he logged about 20 hours of ground and flight time to get current. “It might have been a little bit of overkill, but considering the airspace we fly in, I’m OK with that,” Keller said. Stevensville sits just outside the Washington, D.C., Special Flight Rules Area.

Keller and Rogal flew together a few times to ensure they were compatible, and then began planning their trip. Keller’s 15-year-old son, Calvin, was a passenger.

Weather woes

Rogal and the Kellers took off Friday, July 20. After stopping for fuel in Kentucky, they flew as far as Nashville, Tennessee, to get around a line of weather making its way north and east along the Appalachians.

On Saturday they reached Madison, Wisconsin, and found a hotel room there in the hopes of launching for Wittman Regional Airport (OSH) on Sunday morning. “We kept an eye on the weather and it continued to be marginal VFR with the terminal forecasts at least through noon,” Keller said.

By now you might have read reports—or maybe you were there—of the hundreds of pilots who flew into AirVenture on that Sunday. So much traffic stacked up that harried air traffic controllers began instructing everybody to “turn left.”

“We went around Green Lake eight times, Rush Lake three times, and another four times we exited the approach to Fisk from Ripon because the airplanes got too crowded,” Keller said. “It was like we were doing formation flying.” What would normally be a 35-minute flight stretched into three hours and 15 minutes.

After so many circles, backseat passenger Calvin Keller began to get airsick. Rogal notified ATC, and the controller cleared them to climb to 2,300 feet and then to complete the arrival. At 7:45 p.m.—15 minutes before the airport closed for the day—the 172 touched down on Runway 36L at OSH. The flight from Maryland had taken 17 hours.

Fun on the South 40

With the North 40 camping area full, the 172 was directed to taxi to the South 40. “We passed the first cornfield and we kept going south,” Keller said. “I’m thinking we’re going to taxi back to Madison.” It was now past 8 p.m. and their camping equipment, which they’d shipped separately, was locked up for the night. EAA volunteers opened the building, located their boxes, and borrowed a truck to transport the gear to their campsite. The travelers set up their tents and collapsed into their inflatable beds.

Rogal and Keller are already talking about 2019. They’d like to fly together to Lakeland, Florida, for the Sun ’n Fun International Fly-In. And, of course, they want to go back to AirVenture.

“I absolutely look forward to doing it again,” Keller said. “If I could do it every year I would. The cost of sharing fuel and airport fees and oil was incomparable to renting.”

“It was a grand adventure,” Rogal said. “Joey and I were of like minds. We were going for the experience. It didn’t really matter how long it took to get there.”

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