Adam, great idea! (having a plan)  #1 Find a place to stay, check for
housing on http://www.airventure.org/ and consider Private Housing.  We
have stayed within a 4 block walk of the field with some of the nicest
folks that treat us like family, reasonable too.

Make a daily schedule to utilize your time.  Lancair has a Banquet on
Sat. night (buy tickets at their booth) and a Lancair Builders Forum is
held every year in one of the Forum Buildings on the field.

If you can only stay a couple of days there will be things you will not
have time to do so stay as long as possible.  

Hit the Fly Market for surplus tools, parts, etc. as soon as you get
there if you need anything, the best stuff goes fast.  (I bought a
surplus production quality pneumatic angle drill and a handfull of bits
for $30 that must have cost hundreds, works fine) You can find reamers,
titanium fasteners, etc. that are too cheap to pass up (see goal below)
Be careful, some stuff is pure junk so make sure of what you are buying.


Fri and Sat are the best days to see airplanes, the most planes are on
the field then. Study the parking layout to know where homebuilts,
warbirds, ultralights, antiques, etc. are located--it's a HUGE field.

Exhibitors are there all week so catch them on the way to the next thing
on your list.  It is also easy to miss something.  (Last year I got
lucky and caught the Chief Engineer of the new Honda Aircraft Engine in
the Continental Booth the day he was there, he answered all questions to
the third decimal and had pretty good english too---sold me!)  If
something new is going to be rolled out, vendors will burn the midnight
oil to get it to Airventure.

Forums, you can learn a lot from the speakers, many are the Designer,
the Factory Expert, the Guy Who Wrote the Book (or sometimes they are
just the guy selling a book,) mostly a Who's Who of every aspect of
Aviation.  

If it is your first time you probably will not get to see or do
everything you want, 1979 was the first time I went, haven't missed
since.

PS: Your goal should be search out the "deals" and save enough to pay
for the trip..............just kidding.

 
   Steve Colwell  Legacy in the sanding stage