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:

The author appreciates the unique and often eccentric personalities that populate active airport communities, contrasting them with impersonal large airports or inactive small ones.
He recounts a humorous past experience where an airport's rotating beacon repeatedly failed after 12 months because revelers would climb onto the roof and ride it during annual holiday parties.
At his current, more peaceful airfield, he discovers abandoned "alien research vehicles" in the woods, left by a wealthy former tenant who was obsessed with extraterrestrial life.

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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.