Richard Howell had long thought about going to AirVenture but Oshkosh is a long ways from his home on the West Coast and such a trip needed to wait until retirement. Retirement came in 2018, but then moving to Sequim, WA (of Boys in the Boat fame), and building a Sling 2 became the priorities for several years. Finally, this year, the plane was completed and it was time to live the dream. The Sling, with a Rotax 912iS engine, cruises at 110 knots while sipping only 4 gph, according to Howell, so the trip to Oshkosh was 17 hours of flight time divided into three days. Every minute was a joy! I flew into Fisk on Saturday morning with little issue (one lap around Green Lake while waiting for the Mooney mass arrival to settle in) and landed directly on the green dot with what he judges as his best landing ever. It was all quite thrilling!
When he made his way to Homebuilt Headquarters to register, the entire staff at registration stopped to sing the “Brokaw” song and then awarded him the Perseverance Award, both very fun traditions used to honor builders who fly their homebuilt to Oshkosh for the first time within a year after Phase 1. Howell, like most honorees, was tickled.
Howell is camping with his plane in Homebuilt Camping and enjoying the ease of conversation with like-minded people that he is meeting. He told me, “I have found that the heart of AirVenture isn’t the warbirds or jets, it’s the homebuilts.”
