Five inches of new snow didn’t deter a group of 11 volunteers from the Recreational Aviation Foundation who traveled to the northernmost village in Wisconsin to cut trees and remove brush at Cornucopia Airfield (WI23).
“The snowstorm the previous week didn’t appear to impede the skid steer or the volunteers,” RAF Director Jeff Russell noted.
A number of local town residents also showed up to work with the RAF volunteers on the improvement project, he added.
The group cleared four acres of brush and burned it, and cut and removed 50 trees.
RAF officials and volunteers hope the work will result in the airstrip being listed as “public use” as early as Spring 2022, Russell said.
Check out RAF’s Airfield Guide for information on Cornucopia.
Cornucopia remains the scariest place I have ever flown in and out of. I wish those volunteers all the luck in the world to get it back. Just hope this is the one place that really does do “Build Back Better”.
Remember how you need to do a three leg 200 knt per leg flight as part of your commercial sign off. Back in the late ’70s I did Madison, WI to Sault Saint Marie, MI to Cornucopia, WI back to Madison; I should have done Duluth but Cornucopia met the distance requirement so I picked it. And at the time I was routinely flying in and out of an 1,800 ft field so the airport length didn’t bother me.
Didn’t bother me until the reality of the place set in. Oh the cross wind off Lake Superior was an addition to the challenge but didn’t bother me too much. The 75′ treed on the end of the runway made for some unique arrival and departure slopes and airspeed management challenges but didn’t bother me too much. The fact that the grass probably wasn’t cut all summer and was about 18+” tall on the runway was troublesome but didn’t bother me too much. What bothered me was in addition to the accumulation of these other interesting management challenges is that some knucklehead had parked their plane mid-field along the runway with the nose and wing portion actually taking up a portion of the runway width.
Oh boy… Do I look forward to returning to Cornucopia? Well it has been like 45 years and I can wait another 45 thank you!