Diamond’s DA42 Twin Star. All the way from Austria on under 11 GPH per hour of Jet-A.

Depending on the vagaries of the general economy, EAA’s grand air extravaganza at Oshkosh proves alternately inspiring, boring, encouraging, exasperating or utterly overwhelming. In our view, 2004 was as vibrant an example of the latter that we’ve seen. Ever. And we’ve attended a few of these shows, thanks.

We saw more new airplanes, engines, avionics and pilot gimcracks than we could ever report on or even chat about with the purveyors. Usually, four days worth of plastic potties, straw hats and writhing humanity is more than enough but this year, we could have used four more. In the interest of editorial self-preservation, we’re disgorging our notebook selectively. We’ll have more detailed…