Everyone who comes home from EAA AirVenture Oshkosh brings something back with them: a souvenir, a phone full of photos, a T-shirt with a pilot quote, a tan, lots of memories and maybe even some airplane parts.
Peel back the onion at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh Campus at Whitman Regional Airport (KOSH), and you might easily pass by the white tent in the background, but veteran AirVenture attendees know that this fabric canopy is a homing beacon called the EAA AeroMart.
AeroMart has been the home of AirVenture since 1992 and attracts more than 20,000 shoppers each year, with around 6,000 items typically on sale.
A table full of airfield lights at the EAA AeroMart. (Photo: Frederick A. Johnsen)
On tables and racks in the damp shade lie the slightly battered skeletons of Aeronca control surfaces, pointy Cessna propeller spinners, yellow-tagged instruments and punched-hole aluminum instrument panels.
A highlight of the 2024 show will be a Hartzell propeller for the Lancair, priced at $8,000.
Volunteers from the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) operate the AeroMart and register items consigned by EAA members. The association takes a 12 percent cut of each sale.
All AirVenture visitors, EAA members or not, are welcome to browse the rows of parts.
You never know what parts you might find in the racks at Aeromart — not just dusty diamonds for your next aircraft project.
Aerial photographs, runway lights, old uniforms and, this year, a Russian missile in a wooden box competed for curiosity and cash. A bent propeller that can only hang on a wall and spin a thread rather than revs is available for the price written on the tag.
It remains to be seen whether the aileron will be polished and put back into flight, or whether it will remain hanging on the clubhouse wall, a tale of general aviation bravery through its peeling multi-colored paint. (Photo: Frederick A. Johnsen)
“I wanted a print of the B-17, but I was too busy with work to get one,” said Mary Goddard, an AeroMart volunteer from Green Bay, Wisconsin.
All sales are final. Volunteers noted that buyers have come to trust the condition descriptions provided by sellers on some parts, where openness and honesty are key.
At AeroMart, tables of aircraft instruments await inspection and purchase. Buyers trust the descriptions provided by sellers. (Photo: Frederick A. Johnsen)
When we visited, Callum Hawley had the instrument panel in his hands, pondering its uses. Callum, who describes himself as an “Australian from Hong Kong,” showed it to Cam and Tracy Hawley. The Hawleys are working on a venerable Beech Model 17 Staggerwing cabin biplane, commonly known as Admiral Byrd’s Beech 17, which served with the 1940 U.S. Antarctic Survey. Byrd’s Beechs later flew in Australia.
In the light streaming from the tent, Callum Hawley showed Cam Hawley the instrument panel as he browsed the merchandise on consignment at EAA Aeromart. (Photo: Frederick A. Johnsen)
Sellers began bringing their items to AeroMart on Saturday, Monday, July 22nd, the first day of AirVenture. By 2pm the following Saturday, AeroMart had closed for the year due to a surge in aircraft departures from KOSH. Sellers were able to collect their remaining items, and it is understood that any unclaimed consignments became the property of EAA and could be sold as their own next year.
Three military surplus oxygen tanks await restoration on fighter jets, their patina akin to their lineage. EAA AeroMart sells such items on consignment at each AirVenture. (Photo: Frederick A. Johnsen)
And next year, one of the 6,000 items consigned might just enhance your beach or make your man cave more manly.