For a week, in the last days of July and the first few of August, the world's busiest airport was not in New York, nor Frankfurt, nor London, but rather in the midst of the dairy farming countryside of Oshkosh, Wisconsin. A special team of air-traffic controllers was drawn from America's largest airports to handle the comings and goings of the roughly 10,000 aircraft that gathered here for the 51st annual fly-in meeting of the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA). Contrary to the name, most of these planes were not, in fact, experimental. Rather, they included the humble, workaday aircraft that ferried visitors from across America to the site, and also a vast assortment of restored vintage planes that entertained the 750,000 spectators with daily shows. However, there remained dozens of aeroplanes that are truly experimental. These ranged from a business jet that looks like a fighter plane, to sealing-wax-and-string home-made affairs.
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