Mason Shopperly

Field · Aviation

Arriving together is a qualification, not a preference.

Oshkosh in the last week of July is the highest-workload arrival environment most of these pilots will fly into all year, and the ordinary way in is to fly the visual arrival alone, in a queue, at low level, off a written procedure. The Mooney Caravan is the other way: one formation of Mooneys leaves Madison together and lands together, and getting into it takes clinics and a check before anyone starts an engine. Around it are the airshow at the end of the arrival and one afternoon in a museum in Michigan.

01

The Caravan

A mass formation arrival, and twenty-eight years of it
Five Mooneys in echelon over Wisconsin farmland, photographed from inside the formation with the camera ship's wing across the bottom of the frame.
Five of them over Wisconsin, each one stepped down and aft of the one ahead. Taken from inside the formation: the wing across the bottom of the frame is the one the camera is sitting on. The fins are the Mooney's: leading edge upright, trailing edge raked forward.

The Caravan is an FAA-approved mass formation arrival into EAA AirVenture. Its point is not the spectacle. It is that a pilot who arrives inside it does not have to fly that solo arrival at all, and does not arrive alone at the far end of a long cross-country either.

  • The shapeElements of three, fifteen seconds between elements, onto two parallel runways. They land together and taxi as a group to a reserved block in the North 40, where the Mooney row camps for the week.
  • The gateRegional formation clinics are mandatory and a proficiency check has to be demonstrated before staging. Safety observers ride in the right seat to coach. The standards map onto formation certification.
  • My partI ride in the formation as a volunteer videographer for the Caravan and shoot it from there, which is why the photographs here are taken from inside a formation and not from a fence line.
  • On recordTwo films cut and published, from 2014 and 2015, and a 2026 edit in progress.
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Twenty-eight years, and where two of them are mine

The continuity

The Caravan has been flying into Oshkosh since 1998, it has been capped twice after safety reviews, and more than six hundred and fifty aircraft have flown in it. Amber: my two films.

  1. 1998The first Caravan, on 27 July: 42 aircraft off Madison.
  2. 2000The largest it has ever been, 97 aircraft.
  3. 2003Capped and restructured after a safety review.
  4. 2009Capped and restructured again.
  5. 2014First film cut and published.
  6. 2015Second film, this one named for the Caravan itself.
  7. 202618 July, off Madison, capped at seventy. A third film, in progress.

What 2026 is on record as

  • The arrival was scheduled for 18 July, 10:00, from Madison, capped at 70, about 15 minutes end to end, onto 36L and 36R. AirVenture itself ran 20 to 26 July, so the formation is on the ground and camped before the gates open.
  • On 16 July, first hand: twelve Mooneys at Sioux City, Iowa, and eight of them departed together. Madison was under smoke.
  • A film of that year is being cut.
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Forms, flies, holds, breaks, lands, camps

One arrival, in order
  • A row of Mooneys tied down on a ramp in early morning light, grass and treeline beyond.
    Forms. Madison, the morning of. The Caravan stages on this ramp for days before the arrival.
  • Two Mooneys in formation en route.
    Flies. En route. It is about seventy nautical miles from Madison to Oshkosh, which is the whole distance the formation has to hold.
  • Two Mooneys in echelon seen from the cockpit, with the camera ship's wing in frame.
    Holds. Echelon, from the cockpit, over the camera ship’s wing.
  • Breaks. Between holding and landing, filmed from inside the formation on a phone held upright.
  • Three Mooneys in close formation seen from above.
    The element. Three, which is the unit the whole formation is built out of.
  • Mooney Caravan aircraft parked in a row on the Oshkosh grass.
    Lands. The row on the grass afterwards, wings overlapped, with a marshaller still walking them in.
  • Aircraft parked across a wide grass ramp at Oshkosh.
    Camps. And then it is a field of aeroplanes for a week.
02

Oshkosh

The week after the arrival

EAA AirVenture runs for a week at Wittman Regional and is the largest fly-in in the world, with the busiest control tower on the continent while it is on. The Caravan is on the ground before the gates open, so the rest of it is watched from a camp chair.

  • Canadian Forces Snowbirds in a nine-ship echelon.
    Snowbirds, nine-ship echelon.
  • F-22, F-35, A-10 and F-16 in a heritage combat flight.
    The heritage combat flight.
  • A red aerobatic biplane in the display.
    The Challenger III biplane on the display line.
03

Air Zoo, Kalamazoo

One afternoon, and the engines that justify it

A museum, not flying. Four objects an engineer goes to look at.

  • SR-71 in NASA markings, tail number 831, side view.
    SR-71, NASA #831, with its trainer in the same hall.
  • A Pratt and Whitney J58 engine on display.
    The J58 beside it, the engine that let the airframe do Mach 3.
  • An F-1 rocket engine nozzle photographed from below.
    An F-1 nozzle from underneath, and an F-117 in the next room.
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Sources

Caravan facts from EAA’s mass-arrivals page and the Mooney Caravan. The Sioux City count and the two films are mine.

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