Abandoned and Little-Known Airfields

wwizardforhire 3 days ago 13 commentsRead Article on airfields-freeman.com

FR version is available. Content is displayed in original English for accuracy.

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Discussion (13 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

royskee•about 1 hour ago

I'm glad this site is still up as I haven't looked at it in many years. I used to be based out of W32, Hyde Field and got out during the sale/bankruptcy a few years ago. The recent photos of the place there do a good job capturing the scene of decay. It had essentially no online presence, but there was an active and very good aircraft maintenance shop there until the end. https://airfields-freeman.com/MD/Airfields_MD_PG_S.htm

crnakfls•18 minutes ago

My grandfather ran one of these airports:

https://airfields-freeman.com/CA/Airfields_CA_SanBernardino_...

The stories he would tell of that place. Drug runners landing in the night and him chasing them off with a shotgun. People constantly coming around to try and steal things. The people that would fly in to say hello. He had a real community out there. There were some sad circumstances around the end of his life that meant he couldn't run it the way it should have been run and it fell into decay. My family sold it after his passing as the cost and complexity to run such an airport so far from everything was too much (on top of none of us being pilots). It was a sad event. These days I think it's a solar farm.

hadlock•26 minutes ago

I've used this website to add a bunch of additional airfields in my (non-commercial, personal/hobby) flight sim that has procedurally generated runways, in the bay area specifically, so guy if you're reading this, thanks! Adds a lot of additional color to my sim flying experience.

user_7832•26 minutes ago

I love the concept and upvoted but I really wish there was a [USA] tag. I'm on the other side of the world and I clicked, wondering if there are any airfields near where I live. I am still wondering.

(Side note to those who might know: beyond Juhu Aerodrome, does anyone know of any other such small airfields nearby?

tlb•26 minutes ago

England also has a lot of disused airfields, often with huge hangers and stupendous concrete runways built during WWII. A few are open as museums. They can be worth a quick visit.

robrain•16 minutes ago

My family used to farm a chunk of land in Lincolnshire, UK. Many of our farms were on or surrounded by active or decommissioned RAF bases.

I learnt to drive on the unused tarmac at one of those old bases, RAF Wickenby. As the parent poster mentioned, many of the bases are worth a visit and Wickenby in particular has a memorial to airmen lost in the world wars.

ultrarunner•40 minutes ago

It’s a poignant phenomenon that so many airfields used to exist. People now complain endlessly to get long-established fields shut down *, but red tape keeps any new ones from opening.

* It is important to note that usually, something like 98% of noise complaints come from 1-2 individuals, even in areas with thousands of residents.

embedding-shape•15 minutes ago

I mean I kind of get that. If I bought land/house away from stuff, and suddenly they want to place an airfield right next to me, I'd fight it as well. Moving to where an airfield already is and then try to close it is mischievous behaviour though, and obviously not very kind.

> 98% of noise complaints come from 1-2 individuals, even in areas with thousands of residents.

I think you can replace "noise" with "X" and it still applies to almost everything. People generally just adapt and is fine with pretty much anything not directly impacting your life, in many places.

boguscoder•13 minutes ago

It would still help to add “in US” to the title

xeroedouttwice•about 2 hours ago

I discovered this website in the mid-2000s when I was obsessing over the history of a former airfield (Stengel Airport). This site combined with Google Earth got me hooked on aerial photography (also worthy of mention- USGS EarthExplorer, and FDOT APLUS). Very glad to see the site mentioned.

peterspath•about 2 hours ago

I adore this kind of websites. Dedicated to a lifelong hobby. We need more of that.

lgl•about 2 hours ago

I'm right there with you. These used to be the types of site designs and layouts we didn't want "back in the day" but loading them up these days is like a breath of fresh air, like the old geocities, xoom, etc sites.

Even inspecting the source and seeing HTML 4.0 Transitional, the capitalized tags, the bunch of duplicated meta tags and openoffice as generator no longer gives me the creeps as it would a while ago.

It's a labor of love and only the content matters, everything else is irrelevant! Never change, we do need more of these!

macintux•about 1 hour ago

It's a shame we don't have a better solution than the Internet Archive for preserving these after the creator is gone (or loses interest), but thank goodness we do have that. So many gems lost to time otherwise.