|
Weather was blocking our desired
route along the Chicago shoreline, so we continued west and looped
around Chicago to the south. The low ceiling over Porter Country
broke up about 10 miles to the west and it was severe clear the rest of
the way to Oshkosh.
The sky was empty until we neared Ripon -- a
small town that is the initial point for the approach procedure to Wittman Field
-- and suddenly there were planes all over the place. I managed
to insert myself in the line of planes following the railroad track
out of Ripon. There were planes in line ahead of me as far
as I could see! I was about half a mile behind a high-wing Cessna
of some sort.
Everything was going great when for some
reason, the Cessna in front of me suddenly started went into a
left-hand turn, pulling out of the line. I continued on, but was watching
the Cessna in his left-hand turn. He kept coming around and I
was thinking: he's not going to just come back into the line, is he?
Sure enough, he kept coming around until I must have been in the center of his
windscreen -- I couldn't believe he didn't see me. Finally, to
avoid a mid-air, I had to take take evasive action -- diving and turning
to the left. So now I'm out of the line. I flew parallel to
the line in the opposite direction looking for a space in which to insert
myself. But it was just an endless stream of airplanes. I
ended up going all the way back to Ripon before I could get back in
line.
The second time there were no hiccups
and I made it to the next waypoint: Fisk. Over Fisk, approach asked me which
runway I wanted -- 9 or 36 -- and I told
him 36 since I figured that would make it easier to taxii to the homebuilt
parking area. They switchwed me to the Tower who was talking non-stop. I followed
the east-west road, got cleared to land on 36L yellow dot, and
made a nice wheel landing. Then the ground handlers directed me to
the Homebuilt camping area where I lucked out, getting parked in the first
row of homebuilt camping! Last year I was not quite so lucky, getting
parked in the second to the last row. | 
