Abandoned & Little Used Airfields

KiranWolf writes "I ran across this page doing some research on a local historical landmark. It has detailed histories and photos of more than 500 abandoned and little used airfields throughout the U.S., many of them dating back to the heyday of aviation. It's rather amazing how many small unknown airfields dot the landscape."

Comments

Re:Abandoned British Airfields

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe because the US is several times as big as Britain?

Re:Abandoned British Airfields

[nanojath]

I couldn't say how significant this is but my personal experience, from growing up in rural Minnesota in an agricultural community, is that over the last 20-30 years aerial crop dusting became a much less frequent technique for applying chemicals. My home town has a tiny airstrip that is all but unused now.

Re:But what can we use them for?

[JimPooley]

Best use for an old airfield?
An airfield!

Here in the UK we have a big problem with people wanting to shut airfields down - either town councils who want to sell the land to property developers, or people who move next to an airfield and complain about the planes.

Private Flying is not as big in the UK as it is in the US, by a long chalk, but it's still a sad thing to see airfields replaced with warehouses or the like...

By far the best thing to do with an old airfield is to open it up again - even if it's just a case of refurbishing the runway and putting a bowser (fuel truck) there.

Flying absolutely rules!

Re:Well this is really interesting ...

[ZorinLynx]

Prevent drag racing? Why? An abandoned airport is probably one of the safest places to drag, since there's no traffic to worry about.

It's funny how the government insists on preventing people from having fun. Sure, drag racing can be dangerous, but drag racers know that, and the safest place is on an abandoned runway. This will only force them to drag on the streets, where it's actually dangerous!

Interesting site ./effect and unspoken warning!

[reality-bytes]

I did have a little look around this site before it was slashdotted. Quite interesting with plenty of satellite / aerial views of airfields. Includes a number of airfields which are only visible as silhouettes (where the tarmac has been long removed). Interestingly you can see many airfields of bomber-command in silhouette when flying over Lincolnshire in the UK.

Why oh why does slashdot post frontpage links to websites at tripod.com?? - its painfully obvious that tripod only allocates a pitiful ammount of bandwidth and this page is now unlikely to be reachable for a couple of weeks (until the story is well into the slashdot archives) The Unspoken warning to aviators here: Proceed which extreme caution when attempting to land at any unprepared field. Some of these fields have been out of service for many years and a combination of debris and weathering may have rendered the strip EXTREMELY DANGEROUS

Always make a low-pass when possible (avoiding disturbance to settlements) to inspect the strip and remember when you do land, there may be no services within reasonable distance; emergency or otherwise.

ALWAYS make sure you have either filed a flightplan or let someone know where you are going and when to expect contact from you.

Once again: Be very careful.

Re:Well this is really interesting ...

[Tassach]

An abandoned airport is probably one of the safest places to drag, since there's no traffic to worry about.

Blame it on the lawyers. After Bubba Joe Jim Bob wraps his hopped-up 72 El Camino around a tree on you property, his grieving kinfolk hire a shyster to sue the pants off you. Therefore, as a preventative measure, you have to do something to actively discourage people from trespassing on your property.

It's a fucked up world where some Darwin Award candidate can tresspass on your property, hurt themselves, and then sue you for failing to protect them from thier own stupidity.