By Tom Lindfors
NEW RICHMOND, WI – In his lifetime, Jay Schrankler has owned five aircraft including a gyroplane he built himself.
He got his first taste of flying as an 8-year-old visiting his grandparents in Columbus, Ohio. His grandfather, Floyd, was friends with an Ohio State Highway Patrol trooper.
“Back then it wasn’t hard to get a ride with my grandfather’s friend. So many times, I went up in the trooper’s Cessna 172 and flew highway patrol with him,” Schrankler recounted. “That sparked my interest (in flying).”
But it was more than flying itself that fascinated Schrankler. It was also the science behind flight.
“In grade school I built a wind tunnel out of orange juice cans and tested wing designs as a science fair project,” Schrankler said.
Schrankler would parlay those passions into a stellar career in aerospace and academia over the next six decades.
According to a report by Grand View Research, the value of the global avionics market was estimated to be $44.68 billion in 2023, and it is expected to continue growing at a compound annual growth rate of 9.7 percent over the next 5-10 years
That opportunity has not been lost on CEO Jay Schrankler and his team at Perceptive Avionics, recipient of the St. Croix Economic Development Corporation’s 2024 Emerging Business of the Year Award.
“We’re seeing the industry move from analog mechanical to digital electronic,” Schrankler said.
An engineer by training, Schrankler spent 30 years in the aerospace industry at Honeywell where he was responsible for more than $1 billion in sales.
He followed up his success at Honeywell with a stint at the University of Minnesota Venture Center, a business incubator facilitating startups before accepting an “offer he couldn’t refuse” from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business in 2017.
The pandemic in 2021 turned out to be just what Schankler needed. It enabled him to spend a full year away from Chicago at his vacation home on Cedar Lake to build an avionics business in New Richmond. He partnered with Barry Hammarback, a fellow pilot with whom he shared a hangar at the New Richmond Regional Airport (RNH), to form Perceptive Avionics in 2021.
Home to 268 permanently based aircraft, New Richmond is the largest airport in Wisconsin. It is also largely free from the red tape (imposed by the Metropolitan Airports Commission) constricting airports on the Minnesota side of the St. Croix River.
Schrankler credits airport manager Mike Demulling and his staff for the entrepreneurial ecosystem they have cultivated at the airport.
“Mike doesn’t get the credit he deserves,” Schrankler said. “As a leader at the airport, Mike not only said, ‘Yes, but what can I do to help? It’s really something here, very unique.”
With more than 200 planes hangared at RNH, Schrankler recognized an avionics business could thrive.
In 2017 Schrankler met Lucian Banitz. At the time, Banitz was serving as the Director of Flight Operations for Mavrx, a company also operating out of RNH that provided aerial imaging services for agricultural clients across the country.
