If you don't count NKT, EWN has been my home airport for 9 years. I've done all of my CFI/MEI'ing there, and I got my PPL there back in 2003. I'm moving next week, and I am sad to be leaving, but not sad enough to stay.
I was based/lived in EWN in the early 90s with PDT (they had just changed their name from Henson).
A couple of years ago, we went back through EWN as part of a vacay, and that it was way different than back then.
These days, every small town thinks it’s the next touristy hotspot, and they pour a lot of money sprucing the place up (or trying to) and making sure the “Abe Lincoln’s Dog Slept Here” signs are all polished up. Or sometimes some out of the way place becomes semi-trendy because “it’s purdy” and boom, it’s the next Asheville.
That’s what EWN is trying to be, but it just seems like they’re trying a bit too hard.
Back in the day, it was just this small NC town that was too far from the interstate to attract anything but the locals. It really was “local”. And cheap. It definitely looked like it’s best days were behind. You could get a townhouse on the water with a boat slip for about $40k.
People forget how far east NC sticks out. It was at least an hour drive west to get I-95. Let that sink in. And there is was really nothing around. Jacksonville, NC was hardly a garden spot. Cherry Point MCAS and the fun that brings. Atlantic Beach wasn’t all that once you made the 5 minute pass through town. If you wanted the college scene, I guess you could go up the road to Greenville, NC to ECU. The whole area was really a place out of time, and that was in the 90’s.
Airport was uncontrolled, with a “local” FSS on the field. It was actually one of the very last unautomated FSS to close. The old terminal (with the big “Birthplace of Pepsi” mural) wasn’t much, but there was a lunch counter that made a killer club sammich, and you could call your order in on the in-range call.
They certainly spruced the place up. When they put the new bridge in, lots of new money apparently poured into the place, and now it looks like every other touristy place on the coast with all the same stores as everywhere else.
It is a pretty area. It was quaint getting your clearance through Flight Service (“ATC clears...”) and talking to Cherry Point. I think the ILS has this FAF that was WAY lower than normal...like 1200’.
Lots have changed there, but it’s still WAY off the Interstate, tho.