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	Wisconsin Aviation History Researched by Steve Stuczynski

	Sunday June 15, 1930 With the rainstorms of the previous day gone, a crowd of over 30,000 people attended the closing day of the big Royal Airport meet. By 10:00 A.M. the field was bordered by cars and spectators. By noon standing room was at a premium and farmers within a two-mile area of the airport were doing a very profitable parking business at 25 cents per car. Highways leading to the field from every direction were choked with traffic throughout the entire day. Howard A. Morey, Chief Pilot of Royal Airways roared to victory this Sunday to win the feature Race flying his small Warner powered Monocoupe completing the round trip from Madison to Kohler and return in 1 hour, 27 minutes, and 14 seconds. Approximately 8,000 people, the largest crowd ever to assemble at Kohler Field, saw Captain Morey lead four other participants in the Governor’s Derby. The fliers were entertained at a luncheon at the home of Governor Kohler. The afternoon was filled with other races, stunting airplanes, parachuting exhibits, and planes making dead stick landings. The First Pursuit Squadron of the U.S. Army Air Corps again entertained the crowds with an extraordinary exhibition of formation flying before leaving for their home base at Selfridge Field, Michigan. The sky above Royal Airport was almost cloudless throughout the afternoon. But as most of the day’s activities ended about 5:00 P.M. some more rain clouds moved into the area producing more rain. Exiting the field area proved to be quite a task with vehicles taking as much as 45 minutes to move a mile. Hundreds of people left their stuck cars in the slippery muddy fields. Hundreds of people returned to Royal Airport Sunday night to watch an exhibition of night flying and air fireworks. As an encore to the day’s activities Captain Morey had scores of tiny lights of all colors lining his plane along the wing, down the tail, and across the cowling. He entertained the night crowd for over an hour with spectacular stunts and fireworks. For a climax he dropped parachute flares totaling 1,200,000 candlepower, lighting the countryside for miles around. In view of the thousands of people milling about and all of the air activities taking place, not a single mishap to people or planes occurred to mar the big air meet. In spite of the weekends rains, it was a great air show. No admission was charged, giving the people a great deal of enjoyable entertainment.

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