Fly to a nearby airfield for lunch as a social ritual, maintain each other's aircraft in shared hangars, belong to a type club that is organised around a specific airframe, and camp under the wing at fly-ins. Chapters and type clubs, home airfields which function as social clubs with hangars, aviation forums, and the fly-in campsite, which is the same people in the same spot each year.

The ramp, camping under the wing, the pattern, a taildragger, homebuilt and experimental as categories of identity, a warbird, the type club, a hundred-dollar hamburger, the arrival procedure as a named annual ordeal. The late-July American convention, the April Florida fly-in, the April German general-aviation show, the summer British and European airshows, and the type-club annual gatherings which are small but fiercely attended.

Late July above everything else, when the largest fly-in in the world absorbs a small Wisconsin city for a week.