by Greg Kochersperger
“Red RV over Fisk, Rock your wings….Good Rock, follow the railroad tracks and contact tower, welcome to Oshkosh…” That one-way conversation is all most of us get to have with the professional controllers that so expertly guide the conga line of planes safely into Oshkosh every year during AirVenture. Everyone knows Oshkosh Tower as the “World’s Busiest Control Tower” for the week of AirVenture, but the tower would never be able to handle all of the VFR inbound traffic without a handful of controllers, a pair of binoculars, and a remote radio sitting in a clearing seven miles outside the airport grounds. These are the Fisk Approach Controllers – regular full-time FAA controllers that come from all over the country to spend two weeks in Wisconsin working aircraft. They have the critical job of controlling the flow of arrivals to each of the two active runways and ensuring adequate spacing between arriving aircraft. Get too close to the plane in front of you, and they’ll send you back to the end of the line.
I’ve always wanted to go out and see their operation but never found time to do it. Until this year. The field was MVFR at best on Saturday morning before the official kick-off of the show, and arrivals were just barely trickling in. We opted to skip out on the watching landings at the Green Dot and had a nice lunch at Wendts on the Lake for some perch instead. When we left lunch, the sky had cleared a bit, and we had our chance. We were already in the car out driving around – let’s go check out Fisk!
First challenge – where is it? Well, that was pretty easily solved as both Apple and Google maps have it located. “Siri, go to Fisk VFR Approach Control”, and we were on a way. A short drive, and we parked the car at the bottom of the hill near all the other cars that had the same idea we had. There were a dozen people sitting in chairs on the hill next to the FAA trailer. Four or five controllers with bright pink shirts were sitting at a table in the shade of the awning. One or two of them were spotting traffic with binoculars and reporting the type and location to the controller working the radio. I noticed they had up ADS-B on a laptop to better identify the aircraft type. Visiting the make-shift facility has become quite popular in recent years, and another one of the controllers seemed to be in charge of crowd control. The FAA had recognized the PR opportunity and was handing out some cool stickers and other goodies.
They were all very nice and actively engaging in conversations with the bystanders. It was a serious job, but they were seasoned pros and were very casual about it. The weather had cleared up nicely, but I think some of the lingering storms south of Oshkosh kept the flow of airplanes steady but very manageable. It was definitely light traffic for a Saturday before the show. One of the controllers gave my ten-year-old son an extra pair of binoculars and was helping him spot planes coming up the railroad tracks. He showed us a neat trick of how the powerlines on the other side of the street provided a quick visual check of aircraft spacing – sighting through the powerlines, ensuring no more than one aircraft between the upper and lower lines meant you had at least ½ mile spacing. Simple, but effective.
We only hung out there for 30 minutes or so, but I think it was the highlight of my 2025 AirVenture. I highly recommend going to visit the Fisk controllers next time you’re at Oshkosh.
