By ANN Senior Contributing Editor Kevin "Hognose" O'Brien

Are you counting the days yet? We are!  And since the show officially kicks off in exactly one month, it's time to remind you all! Airventure 2004 runs from July 27th to August 2nd, so mark your  calendar and join a Who's Who of aviation for the aviation world's answer to Woodstock, lemming migrations, and the Haj. Besides, there'll be nothing on TV but a political convention, and even the politicians would rather be at Oshkosh.

The Theme: the Future

Officially, the theme is: "Launching the Next Century of Flight". The contrast with last year's show couldn't be clearer. Last year we looked back on a century of flight; they may have been absent in body, but the guests of honor were Orville and Wilbur Wright. and all the thousands that have built aviation in a long, unbroken chain of human drama from
THEN to NOW.

This year the guests of honor are very much with us, and they are aviators who look forward to the new century of flight: folks like Burt Rutan, Mike Melville, Dr. Peter Diamandis, and the men and women behind NASA's record-setting X-43. Not to mention the grasssroots of our next century, the incubator of future Rutans and Melvilles: the Young Eagles program, with its new chairman, Harrison Ford, taking on the mantle previously borne by Cliff Robertson and Chuck Yeager.  Hmmm... two guys who are in movies, and one about whom a movie was made. Do I detect a pattern emerging?

It's a great time to be an aviator and there is no better place to be than Wittman Field at the end of July.

Be There, Be Square... or Be Here

If you can fly in that's great; if you fly your homebuilt in you get this nifty patch depicting a Sonerai. If you do fly in, for the love of Mike check the NOTAM. Don't be the guy all the
other pilots are talking about this year. If you plan to drive in, or take a human-mailing-tube, there's some helpful info on the Airventure website.

But what if you can't be there? Well, then, the best place to be is  right here -- feasting your eyeballs on this website and/or Propwash you're reading. We're going to have stories on what's new -- including lots of X-Prize stuff --  and what's old but still flying -- including lots of warbird stuff -- some of which is "new" because warbirds are still
being found and restored even now.

We'll have plenty of pictures, both the functional kind guys like me take, and the award-winning photos that Tyson Rininger of TVR Photography takes... you know, the stuff that
makes me want to cremate my camera.

Expect lots of words too -- our words, putting things in context, or translating the precise and dense verbiage of pocket-protector engineers into simple pilot's English; and the words of the luminaries, designers, boy geniuses and old, bold pilots that make Oshkosh what it is.

We can't bring you the heady aroma of castor oil a 1914 rotary engine gives off, or the vibration you feel in your chest when the Marines' Harrier hovers nearby, but we are going to try our best.

How is Aero-News going to Cover Airventure?

As always -- and like no other aviation news source -- we're gonna saturate the place. Aero-News is going to have the usual cracked... er... crack team along with a few new faces. Our mobile office will be in its usual place next to the Media Center. Stop in and say hey -- we don't bite... well, Josan -- the publisher's bodyguard canine -- does, but she's minding the phones at HQ. We're gonna be out and about a lot, and going back and forth to our OSH house, but somebody should usually be in. Especially if you have a story for us!

We are already banging out embargoed stories, fighting over plum assignments, and boning up on the whole world of what's-new-that-do-go-up so that we can bring you the best possible coverage of what we see. We wish you all could be there. Of course, if that were the case, we could relax and enjoy the show, instead of typing like mad chimpanzees until 0330... But we know you can't, so let us be your eyes and ears.

FMI: www.airventure.org, www.airventure.org/2004/news/040429_hbhq_patch.html