A homeowner in Waukesha for 20 years, Steve is president of the Waukesha Dog Parks Organization and enjoys motorcycling, fishing and staying on top of politics.
On a recent morning while leaving for work, I heard an unusual sounding aircraft departing the county airport and turning over my house. I recognized it as a VariEZ. It is an unusual looking design, one of many by Burt Rutan who is famous for designing Voyager which flew around the world on a single load of fuel and most recently was the first private company to send an aircraft into sub-orbital space, winning a huge prize for doing so and qualifying the pilots for astronaut wings from the FAA.
I would have liked to visit the big fly-in. I used to belong to the association and began going to the fly-ins when they were still held in Rockford Illinois. I did some volunteer work. Usually waving planes off the active runway so it was safe for both them and the approaching planes. This can be fun when the planes land long!
The EAA was founded in Hales Corners and the first museum was there on Forest Home Avenue. Near by was Hales Corners airport, which now is covered with condominiums. It wasn’t a great airport as the runway was so hilly that a smooth landing was nearly impossible. But it was filled with people who loved aviation. Few people remember Maitland field, though thousands of Summerfest visitors walk over it. For what it means, I don’t remember it either!
Also gone is Aero Park Airport, which was over on Lisbon and Lannon roads. I learned to fly there in a sailplane when I was 15. Each Father’s Day our EAA chapter held a fly-in which included an airshow, food and plane rides. The airport is now planted with soybeans and all that remains are remnants of the parking lot.
After learning to fly there, I got a job gassing airplanes, cutting the grass runways and sweeping out the office and hanger at Capital Drive Airport, which thankfully is still there. The air was always filled with planes departing and landing. Often a half dozen or more planes where in the traffic pattern. When I was old enough to get my pilot’s license, I flew over to our county airport where Harlan Sedgwick gave me my fight test. I’d rent the occasional Piper Cherokee 140 there as a break from the high wing Cessna’s and my Dad’s Aeronca that I flew at Capital.
As I watched that VariEZ fly overhead, I thought of all the airports closed, airplanes lost and pilots that either passed away or like me, resigned to the fact that general aviation is a hobby for the well to do. I also wondered about the old hanger that was disassembled and bought by an organization that was to rebuild it at another location. It was perhaps the last reminder of a golden age of general aviation at the airport.
There are several reasons things have changed. Besides things just getting very expensive, government promotion of becoming pilots was done around WWII, which caused the explosive growth of the number of airports and airplanes. Most known to non-pilots as the Piper Cubs. These men and women have aged or passed along and the efforts of the EAA have not been able to sustain these numbers.
General aviation is far from dead. It will indeed live on but on a higher level than the so-called grass roots days. I don’t know that this is a good thing. I don’t think Dale or Dean Crites would either.
