Waunakee

Submitted by Mark Langenfeld

Waunakee Airport.  The Badger Skydivers jumped there for a couple of years (ca. 1972-'73) after the Sextonville DZ shut down and the Pine River Valley remnants moved to the Lancaster, WI, airport.  Steve Schimming was our jump pilot at Waunakee.  He had a 180 for awhile, but replaced it with one of the few remaining 196s (NICE ship!). The demise of the Waunakee DZ was probably at least in part due to pilot Steve Schimming getting an air traffic controller job with the FAA and gypsying out the 196.  It ended up leased (?) to PI in Lakewood, NJ, who succeeded in rolling it up in a ball in 1976.

This shot was taken in June 1973 after the first successful 8-way out of Steve Schimming's 196 (N3878V -- which I'm pretty sure is the same one which, before a rebuild/repaint, was flown and crashed at Rainbow). L-R G. Larson, B. Zimmerman, J. "Fubar" Battalio, D. "Shaky" Bulin, J. Konicek, the late D. Patterson, J. "Schmitty" Schmitt, J. Severson and pilot S. Schimming.