Another year and I still have not made the requisite trek to Aviation’s Mecca. But I’ve spent a little time this morning burning internet bandwidth with two webcam streams and two KOSH Tower frequencies.

For anyone who has seen parallel sequenced landings at a major airport like Boston Logan or Los Angeles, those are nothing compared to what takes place at Oshkosh’s Wittman Airport during AirVenture. In 2009, there were 3,000 flights handled by the tower in just 10 hours – that is a take-off or landing every 12 seconds !

They manage this feat by dividing up the runway length with a series of large colored dots (more like targets) and landing planes at different points along the runways. They also must reduce radio communications time by using one-way communications with airplanes giving visual confirmation either by flight path or rocking wings.

It’s orchestrated chaos