Broadhead Airport lies just outside the sleepy little village of Brodhead, Wisconsin which is itself located just across the Illinois border amid gently rolling terrain filled with corn fields and grass runways. After the war, Dick Weedn came to the nearly abandoned place to begin restoring his Rearwin airplane and in the process laid the foundation for a unique and vibrant antique aircraft community.
We arrived in Janesville on Friday morning and as we drove into the Brodhead airport the Kelch Museum, located on its grounds, was surrounded by several hundred cars. When I met Pat Weedn, Dick’s son and the Museum’s director the next day, he told me his dad had passed away the week before. The cars were there for a memorial service in memory of the airport’s founding father.
A few months ago I asked a friend in California to let me know if he learned of a hangar available here as I wanted to take one of my biplanes up for the flying season. There was room in his hangar, and we are sharing for the summer with his newly restored Fleet. My plan is to attend First Ditch, MAAC, Airventure, and the National Waco Club fly-ins, and perhaps a couple more, from here.
There are three nice grass runways here and hangar owners have a clubhouse in addition to the museum to hang out in. There are a few dozen hangars, some quite nice, and a few ramshackle ones which have seen better days. But there are lots of neat airplanes!
We spent the rest of Friday cleaning a thousand nautical miles of oil, grease, dirt, and bugs off my UMF 3 and called it a day. As we were to learn in the morning that was close to a complete waste of time – there are trillions of bugs here and I killed seemingly a few hundred thousand on each flight! At a relaxed and reasonable hour Saturday morning, we needed gas and headed out across brown fields with corn just beginning to peep up to my favorite airport Poplar Grove about 30 miles away in Illinois.
After fueling I made a dozen landings on C77’s fairway-like runways and headed back to Brodhead (C37). As we switched frequencies there seemed to be a lot of folks headed that way! After landing we discovered a mental health group was having a tradeshow and hot dog lunch. They were happy to feed us, and we accepted. The Rolls Royce and Bentley clubs were eating at the other end of the museum. Someone said their meal was catered to which I replied “Of course!”
After lunch, we visited the museum which has a really nice collection:
Then we headed back to Monroe where we were staying for a nap. All this antique aviation business is tiring for us antique pilots you know! In the early evening, we were back out there for some Golden Hour pattern work. Campers and a few clubhouse denizens were on hand to grade my landings and a low pass or two. What fun!
Written By
Tony Caldwell
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