Savoring Your Airfield's Parade of Eccentricity

Pilot finds his airport strikes a perfect balance of enough activity to be interesting but small enough to foster a community environment.

Jason McDowell

Wednesday, January 01, 2025 at 11:30 AM ET

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Edited By:

Kimberly Johnson

With hangar space for 34 airplanes, a 3,100-foot grass runway, and a vibrant and active group of hangar tenants, Brooklyn Airport (7WI5) in south-central Wisconsin strikes an ideal balance of peacefulness and activity. [Courtesy: Jason McDowell]

Key Takeaways:

Airports, especially smaller ones, foster vibrant and often eccentric communities of pilots and aviation enthusiasts.
The author shares anecdotes illustrating these unique characters, including "airport bums," revelers who annually broke an airport beacon by riding it, and a former tenant who conducted extraterrestrial research.
Ultimately, the article celebrates the diverse personalities and strong sense of community found at airfields, valuing their camaraderie and unique stories, ideally when balanced with safety.

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Some people keep their airplanes at big airports, surrounded by airliners and corporate jets, where the hangar tenants rarely interact. Others are based at tiny fields with only a few other hangars and little flying or social activity.

But if you’re like me, fortune has smiled upon you, and you’ve found yourself at airports with active communities of personalities that are unique enough to make any reality show producer salivate.