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United States Hardware

Abandoned & Little Used Airfields 329

Posted by Hemos from the looking-into-the-past dept.
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."
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Abandoned & Little Used Airfields More

Abandoned & Little Used Airfields

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  • hmm. (Score:3, Informative)

    by XO ( 250276 ) <blade.ericNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday February 17, 2003 @09:32AM (#5318965) Homepage Journal
    I can't say that there's much to talk about here... (First Post! *laugh*)

    But in my hometown of Galesburg, Michigan, there is a city park that is also a combination landing strip. It's never actually been used.

  • Department of Homeland Security (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17, 2003 @09:32AM (#5318967)
    Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Please report to camp X-Ray for de-briefing.

  • I prefer to think of them (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17, 2003 @09:33AM (#5318971)
    as potential autocross locations.

  • Favorite (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17, 2003 @09:35AM (#5318989)
    My favorite is Big Beaver Airport [tripod.com] in Michigan. I kid you not - Big Beaver is Exit 69 on Interstate 75 [angelfire.com].
    • Back in the late 80's the radio station I listened to used to always give directions to Troy as "take I-75 to exit 69, Big Beaver Road". I think I giggled the first 50 times I heard it.

      Of course, we also knew to take I-69 to Ball State.

  • So... (Score:5, Funny)

    by sirgoran ( 221190 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @09:35AM (#5318992) Homepage Journal
    could one of these airfields be where my luggage ended up?

    Just wondering...

    -Goran

  • Abandoned British Airfields (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jago25_98 ( 566531 ) <(slashdot) (at) (phonic.pw)> on Monday February 17, 2003 @09:36AM (#5318997) Homepage Journal
    We have quite a few here in Britian but they're nearly all World War II.

    So why does the US have so many? Having a quick look they seem mostly military.

    • Re:Abandoned British Airfields (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17, 2003 @09:42AM (#5319033)
      Maybe because the US is several times as big as Britain?

    • 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.
      • 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

        They are still spraying. (grin) More and more folks are using Helicopters. You drive the fuel/chemical truck on location and land on the truck as a mobile base. Works better for some crops than using a plane.

        Alas, tractors work too - depends on the location. For aerial crop dusting, an airstrip may be optional...
      • Airstrip? Tell that to that guy who owns land next to my grandfather's place. He thinks that because the highway out there gets so little traffic, it's okay for him to land the crop duster right on the highway. I guess he's not exactly the smartest person in the world.
    • Then there are the jungle airfields in Columbia. They look abandoned. Just make sure they aren't in FARC [yahoo.com] controlled territory.
    • Most of the fields here are ex-WWII as well. Homeland security was an issue then. Plus, with a war machine like the U.S. put up in WWII, you had to have a *lot* of basic, advanced and conversion training facilities. Besdies, technically, most of the squadrons in Europe, Southeast Asia, the Pacific and Noth Africa had a home field in the contiental U.S.
    • I think it is because air travel was one of the more appropriate and popular post-war ways to travel domestically in the US, because of the States' size.

      In the UK, however, we just have broken and abandoned railway stations (Dr. Beeching?).

      Or is that our current railway system? ;)

  • concerts (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Joe the Lesser ( 533425 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @09:36AM (#5318998) Homepage Journal
    Abandoned air strips are great places for concerts, fairs, cult worship ceremonies, and other gatherings.

  • AZ (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Scratch-O-Matic ( 245992 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @09:37AM (#5319007)
    I've done a lot of flying all over southwest Arizona, and there are a ton of little airfields out there, many of them in a 3-runway triangle configuration, that apparently used to be used for military training. I've seen a bunch of them that had been turned into little neighborhoods. In a way it reminds me of those post-apocalypse movies where people make primitive use of old abandoned technology.
    • I used to serve in a US base in Germany that was once home to a fighter squadron (Christiansen Barracks). The main runway was converted into the main road trunk.

      After the Army left, the Germans finally sold the barracks. Now there's no trace of its former military background, just the unusually straight (for Germany) main road in the new suburb called Bindlacher Berg near Bayreuth.

  • Well this is really interesting ... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SuperDuG ( 134989 ) <`be' `at' `eclec.tk'> on Monday February 17, 2003 @09:38AM (#5319012) Homepage Journal
    There's even more history to be learned.

    Take a look at the amount of abandoned train tracks throughout america, it's extremely sad.

    Back on topic. The one group that does know of the existance of all of these small little airfields is the DEA. With a small prop engine plane able to land nearly anywhere that's fairly long and flat it makes it virtually impossible to make any attempt to stop these planes from landing and dropping their loot.

    With the infrared technology (nightvision) and other GPS devices these planes can fly in the dead of night during a new moon phase with no lights on and still relatively safely land and takeoff. So yes, these are not forgotten air strips, but there are some that wished they were.

    Even more unrelated, where the hell do you get gas. Seeing as I've never flown a plane and definantelly not the lawnmower with wings kind. How does one go about getting gas? Do you just really fill up the tank, or in a pinch can you throw some standard disel in there? Always bugged me because I've never seen a plane gas station before, seen them for cars and boats, just never planes.

    • Re:Well this is really interesting ... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Alioth ( 221270 ) <no@spam> on Monday February 17, 2003 @09:52AM (#5319094) Journal
      Most airports have a plane "gas station". Often, a fuel truck is used (the airport operator will drive the truck to your plane, and pump the fuel in) and sometimes there are self-serve credit card fuel pumps, just like you use to fill your car up with. Go to any local general aviation airfield and you'll probably see this in action.

      Most GA aircraft take 100LL (100 octane avgas), but many can run on unleaded fuel too.

    • About that gas... (Score:5, Informative)

      by baine ( 600693 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @09:52AM (#5319097) Homepage Journal
      Deffinately do not put diesel in your plane, unless you happen to be flying a WWII era Mescerschmitt (designed to run on deisel because more refined fuels were scarce). The reason you never see a plane gas station (though they do exist), is because fuel is usually delivered via fuel truck; a commercial vehicle with a big tank, pump, and hoses attached.

      wait...
      In Soviet Russia, you do not get airplane gas,
      the avgas gets you!

      (always wanted to do that one)

      Anyhow, there are various grades of aviation fuel, everything from kerosine and derivatives that the jets burn to 110 octane Low Lead, 100 octane, and avgas (essentially what you put in your car). The fuels are injected with color-coded dyes do you can check to see if you've got the right gas in your plane. 110LL (the most comon variety for small prop planes) is blue. If you mix another fuel type in with it, the dyes are designed to combine chemically, and the fuel becomes clear.

      As much as I'd love to own my own airstrip (I've been a licensed pilot longer than I've been licensed to drive a car), it's a regulatory nightmare to get one operating. Even as just a private strip, you've got everything from zoning commisions to public noise ordinances to deal with (in the U.S. anyhow).

      • Re:About that gas... (Score:3, Informative)

        by mooneyguy ( 455024 )
        110 octane Low Lead, 100 octane, and avgas (essentially what you put in your car)...110LL (the most comon variety for small prop planes) is blue

        Sorry, but you are referring to 100LL (100 octane low-lead). There is no 110 octane. There is 80 and 100LL. 80 is green and 100LL is blue. 100LL is by far the most common, 80 is rather hard to find.

        There are places that have "self serve" pumps where you pull the plane up to a pump. But most places deliver it by truck and have an employee pump it.

        • Avgas 80/87 octane is RED, 100/130 leaded is GREEN (Score:3, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          and there is virtually no more places you can find 100/130 leaded avgas for sale anymore... you can special-order it in 55 gallon drums from some specialty fuels distributor in California and is used mostly only by air racers anymore. You can also get the 115/145 leaded avgas (colored rich dark purple) this way, but it cost about $25-30 per gallon.

          100LL (blue color) is a misnomer, because it's lead level is not very "low" at all. It has up to 2 grams per gallon of tetraethyl lead. 80/87 only has a max of 0.5 grams pre gallon of TEL. 80/87 leaded "regular" avgas has almost disappeared from the market, forcing many pilots who need the lower octane, truly low lead fuel to have to buy unleaded auto fuel and mix it in about a 3:1 ratio with 100LL. With so many auto gasoline suppliers now contaminating their gas with ethanol (which means a significant amount of water getting in the gas too due to hygroscopic nature of ethanol), pilots cannot use auto fuel in many parts of the country because at altitude, the temperature drops and the ethanol/water will freeze in the fuel lines resulting in engine stoppage.... not good.

          Hopefully soon, the new 82 octane unleaded avgas (colored light purple) will be put into production and available thru distribution channels soon.

          There also are programs to develop a pure ethanol aviation fuel (E-85) but that requires both the aircraft and engines to be specifically engineered to keep the fuel systems sealed from the atmosphere (to keep water vapor out), keep fuel system pressurized with dry nitrogen, and possibly also keep it heated too. Of course ethanol has much lower calories of useful energy in it per mass, so useful load and range of these aircraft are greatly reduced.

        • Re:About that gas... (Score:3, Informative)

          by MaggieL ( 10193 )

          Sorry, but you are referring to 100LL (100 octane low-lead). There is no 110 octane. There is 80 and 100LL. 80 is green and 100LL is blue. 100LL is by far the most common, 80 is rather hard to find

          Sorry, but 80/87 AvGas is *red*. *100/130* is green. 82 unleaded is purple.

          Maggie K3XS, 1/10th owner C-177B N19762, who learned to fly at a tiny little field where taildraggers that drank 80/87 were common.

          • Maggie K3XS, 1/10th owner C-177B N19762, who learned to fly at a tiny little field where taildraggers that drank 80/87 were common.

            I sure hope you were talking about the planes rather than the pilots...
      • I used to have friends who'd buy avgas from the local airport for their cars. Before they discovered nitrous ( and melted pistons ) they were all into domes pistons and shaved heads for high compression. You needed some seriously high octane gas to avoid engine knock and back then avgas was cheaper than buying additives ( and safer than using mothballs ) and this was also before the local gulf stations started selling racing gas.

    • Re:Well this is really interesting ... (Score:4, Informative)

      by stilwebm ( 129567 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @09:57AM (#5319131)
      The one group that does know of the existance of all of these small little airfields is the DEA. With a small prop engine plane able to land nearly anywhere that's fairly long and flat it makes it virtually impossible to make any attempt to stop these planes from landing and dropping their loot.

      I certainly expected the DEA to know about these, especially near borders and the southern coastlines. Some of the airfields in my area (Tennessee) that were abandoned were cut up with deep trenches every 50 yards or so, with the dirt piled onto the runways. This far north the effect was not to prevent smuggling as much as to prevent drag racing.

      • Re:Well this is really interesting ... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by ZorinLynx ( 31751 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @10:24AM (#5319284) Homepage
        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!

        • Re:Well this is really interesting ... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Tassach ( 137772 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @11:27AM (#5319705)
          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.

    • near where the planes park. Just like they do for cars really. If you don't go where the plane's park, you won't see a gas station for them.

      I mean, really, it would be pretty silly to have a plane gas station at the mall, wouldn't it? So they put them back behind the hangers at *airports.*

      If you're talking light prop driven planes, yes, you just put gas in them. No you do *not* put diesel in them because they aren't diesel motors.

      For a small jet you *could* just put diesel in there, like if the feds were bearing down on you and that's all you had, but you wouldn't be happy about it.

      You want to see a plane gas station? It's as easy as going to the local small airport and asking.

      KFG
      • For a small jet you *could* just put diesel in there, like if the feds were bearing down on you and that's all you had, but you wouldn't be happy about it.

        Conversely, if you happen to have a diesel car, it will run very nicely on Jet-A. My CFII flies a Beech King Air for a company, and he always parks his 2002 VW Bug with the Turbo Diesel in the hangar. When the fuel truck guys come by to fill up the airplane (a couple hundred gallons at a time), they throw a couple extra gallons into his car out of courtesy. Consequently, he never has to buy his own gas (and he gets like 58mpg anyway).
    • Take a look at the amount of abandoned train tracks throughout america, it's extremely sad.
      Not so sad, abandon rails can be turned into Trails for walking and biking.
    • eeing as I've never flown a plane and definantelly not the lawnmower with wings kind. How does one go about getting gas? Do you just really fill up the tank, or in a pinch can you throw some standard disel in there?

      Most of the locally run airports will have pumps. Some self-serve with a credit card, some full service during the day. For those that don't, bring a hose... Most aircraft don't have locking gas caps. (duck)

      Way back when I was learning how to fly, I pumped gas for a small FBO. They let me fly at cost, paid me a bit, and let me experience the glory of blue-juice engineering. Some n00b did just that - ran low on gas and ditched in a little used field because he did not do his math first. He called, I drove a fuel truck for a few hours and filled him up. As a side note, most of those little airports are marked on maps and a good GPS will have them as well. Well worth the cash to have a little box that will always give you a pointer to the nearest field when you have errata in the air.

      Usually, the smaller non-turbine stuff will use 100LL, which is pretty close to normal high-octane gas. One might put in normal gasoline in a dire emergency, but running out of fuel and being stranded at an airport is not such a beastie. I suspect it would give you the same problems a Porsche running 95 octane unleaded - with a stalled engine being a serious matter on takeoff. I have a 1958 Stitts playboy with a Continental o200 engine. I could have set it up for normal gasoline, but 100LL is pretty easy to come by.

      For the jets and other turbine-powered stuff, they use Jet A, which is essentially kerosene.

  • The Real Question Is (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dknight ( 202308 ) <damen AT knightspeed DOT com> on Monday February 17, 2003 @09:40AM (#5319023) Homepage Journal
    How do people who are... say... interested in things like Drag Racing get access to such air strips (preferrably legally)?

    Airfields like this would be a great way to keep people who are just interested in racing recreationally (and who dont want to go to the track), off public streets.
    • Find the owner and ask/pay for permission to use the strip. They are great locations for drag strips since they're frequently far enough outside of town to keep the noise complaints at bay.

      Probably have to get insurance though. Good luck with that.

  • There are more in Britain (Score:5, Informative)

    by flippet ( 582344 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @09:41AM (#5319026) Homepage

    The east and especially the south coast of Britain has possibly the highest concentration of disused airfields anywhere, dating back from the war. Fields in the south east were to ensure a wide spread of fighter cover, and airfields further north in counties such as Lincolnshire and Essex were bomber bases.

    Many of these have dissappeared completely; some remain as private airfields, while others are converted for other purposes such as racetracks.

    • I'm in North Yorkshire, the location of a number of WW2 RAF bomber bases. I wandered around one of them as a child, but I'm not sure which one it was.

      There were also a few fake air-bases built to confuse German recce units.
    • Yup, we have Boyndie race track up here in North-East Scotland. I believe it used to be used as an airfield (mainly for Mosquitoes) in WWII but has now been redeveloped as a go-karting track.

      I can readily understand the South & East being especially thick with airfields, however.

    • There's a long, disused WWII airstrip just off the A3 south of the M25 in Surrey. I used to drive past it every day on the way to work, but you can't see it from the road due to the elevation of the end of the strip. I had no idea it was there until we did a country walk in the area. The public footpath right-of-way goes right down the middle of the airstrip!

      There is a strip of metal barrier across the middle of the runway - probably to dissuade use as a dragstrip or to discourage its use by smaller planes. It's pretty impressive to walk right down the centre of an airstrip (the disused terminal is at the Ockham end of the strip, not far from a pretty decent pub).

      You can see the strip on this map [streetmap.co.uk].

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @09:52AM (#5319095)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • NASA to the rescue (Score:5, Interesting)

    by brunnock ( 18853 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @09:53AM (#5319099) Homepage

    Would you believe that NASA is trying to rescue those airfields?

    http://sats.nasa.gov/ [nasa.gov]

    • Re:NASA to the rescue (Score:4, Informative)

      by JimPooley ( 150814 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @10:14AM (#5319225) Homepage
      Would you believe that NASA is trying to rescue those airfields?

      Well, they are the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Before 1958 they were NACA - the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.

      You often hear of planes having a NACA aerofoil wing, and even the air vents on many planes are of NACA design.
  • Why couldn't you put the bunny back in the box?

  • KS Airfields (Score:3, Informative)

    by rosewood ( 99925 ) <`ur.tahc' `ta' `doowesor'> on Monday February 17, 2003 @09:56AM (#5319119) Homepage Journal
    Ive always been suprised at how many airfields dot the KS landscape! I know there are 3-4 just outside the Wichita City Limits.

    http://members.tripod.com/airfields_freeman/KS/A ir fields_KS_W.htm

    That talks about Hutch airport. Airplanes still fly out of there and a lot of richy-rich types fly the short drive to Hutch to do antique shopping and shit like that up there.
    • Wichita used to have a ton of aviation related industry. I know they've still got Boeing and Cessna but at one time there were lots more.

      There's an old airstrip about 50 miles south of Wichita (west of Arkansas City) that I (mis)spent much of my youth at drag racing.

  • standard charts & airport lists (Score:5, Interesting)

    by awb131 ( 159522 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @09:56AM (#5319120)

    The information isn't cheap to come by because it is updated so often and used by so few, but a lot of smaller airports are public knowledge. Private pilots know where to get it. But really, all a small Cessna needs to take off or land is about 1/2 mile of relatively flat terrain. If conditions were right an experienced pilot could land on a well-mowed field or dirt road. But most established airports with attended hangars & other services are listed on charts e.g. the ones from Jeppesen [jeppesen.com].

    And the reason nobody ever sees aviation fuel pumps is because you're never at little airports like this. Even small planes fly much faster than cars can travel, so they're not always closely spaced, but believe me, they're everywhere. Probably at least one to a county (in the midwest.)

    • Friend who has a single-engine lands it on the top of a broad hill on his ranch. It's not exactly flat, but it's a sufficiently long unimpeded stretch of ground that it does the job. If you didn't occasionally see a plane parked atop the hill, and a goat track leading down to the house half a mile away, you'd wonder why the heck someone bothered to move the rocks off to one side out here in the middle of nowhere.

      Farm and ranch country is littered with airstrips of that sort, where someone has moved the big rocks and smoothed out the larger bumps on the largest near-flat area available. Crop dusters can land in the damnedest places!!

  • they don't have mine! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by esthanya ( 615032 )
    I have a lovely abandoned air strip out on my farm in northern Indiana.

    My uncles and family friends used it for about 50 years, starting in 1938, but people built a paved one not too far from town. So everybody stwitched. I think, around this little town, there were 6 or 7 air fields. Most are being cultivated, but I think ours and my great uncle's can still function, reflectors and all.

  • Frank K. Thomas (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @09:58AM (#5319132) Homepage Journal
    I flew over the New River Gorge, several years ago, with an aviation pioneer who kept a small airfield in Fayetteville, WV, going. He's got a small museum and a couple books out "It Is This Way With Men Who Fly" and "State Of Confusion: West Virginia", both interesting reads as he's jotted down many things over the years and accumulated them in very fascinating notes and stories, including training WWII flyers and the crash which took the lives of most of the Marshall football team.

    Frank used to (I don't know if he still is able) give flights over the gorge and Fayetteville for $5 (hence he was known as Five-Dollar-Frank), for $7 he'd take you up the river to Thurmond. A rare treasure to be seized while it's available.

    • Re:Frank K. Thomas (Score:2, Interesting)

      by luguvalium2 ( 466022 )
      I took a plane ride with Frank also.

      I think he was the oldest, or at least one of the oldest, licensed pilots in the us.

      My experience was much like this website, right down to him turning off his hearing aid after takeoff:

      http://www.worldserver.com/gsp/2000RaftTrip/fran k. htm

  • Disney World airstrip (Score:5, Funny)

    by Comrade Pikachu ( 467844 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @10:01AM (#5319150) Homepage
    I was surprised that they did not mention the airstrip at Disney World in Florida, adjacent to the approach road to the Magic Kingdom. Perhaps because it is no longer recognized by the FAA, and is instead being used for bus staging.

    According to this page [hiddenmickeys.org], Imagineers built grooves into the runway which would cause aircraft axles to rattle off "Zip-a-dee-doo-dah" upon take-off or landing.

  • Gimli, Manitoba (Score:5, Interesting)

    by s20451 ( 410424 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @10:01AM (#5319151) Journal

    Here's my token plug for Canada ...

    An abandoned airfield at Gimli, Manitoba, saved the lives of dozens of passengers in 1986, when a brand new Air Canada 767 on a flight from Ottawa to Edmonton glided to an emergency landing after running out of fuel in mid-air [wadenelson.com]. The 767 calculated fuel in metric units, unlike most older aircraft, which confused the flight crew and resulted in an inadequate fuel load.

    Ironically, the crew that Air Canada sent to recover the aircraft got lost on their way to Gimli and ended up running out of gas.

  • Be sure to look at... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nochops ( 522181 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @10:01AM (#5319155)
    Be sure to check out this [tripod.com] page.

    In my many years of travels working as a flight crewman for a well known commercial airship company, I spent many many days in those massive blimp hangars.

    They are truly national landmarks, and are breathtaking to see. Both inside and out, they are unbelievable. As the page says, they are the largest wooden structures in the world.

    While I was there, MCAS Tustin was still operational, but there were talks of destroying at least one of the hangars. The other was to become either a museum or something else.

    Now that The base has been officially closed, friends from the area said that those plans have been scrapped, and both hangars will be destroyed.

    This is truly a shame, since these hangars have such history in them. Also, they are tremendously usefull for the current airship industry. Sometimes, the airship has to be hangared, and you can't exactly stuff one into a normal sized hangar. There aren't too many hangars this big left in the US, and it would be a terrible shame to destroy them.

  • Trainspotting (Score:3, Funny)

    by CoderByBirth ( 585951 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @10:04AM (#5319170)
    If you're into abandoned airstrips, you should try trainspotting.
    Now that's some truly exciting shit!

    • Re:Trainspotting (Score:2, Interesting)

      by TrevZB ( 15857 )
      It actually can be, depending on where you are and how much activity there is. Not so much the trains, though some people do get into that; but more interesting is the old infrastructure and little ghost towns along the way.

      Of course, here in the Age of Level Orange, da bulls get a little testy when they see someone hanging around near the yard, and they're just as likely to call the Federales as not...I've heard of several people being harrassed for pursuing their lifelong hobby watching trains...

      Trev
  • OK, I know it's off-topic kinda, but we have some cool abadoned Tube Stations [demon.co.uk][demon.co.uk] in London.

    The tube (London's underground rail system) network is the largest in the world and there are a lot of old tube stations that were abandoned due to improvments to existing stations and changes in the organisation of the lines. They are all mainly closed off, though you can still see some above ground.

    Perhaps a little more spooky than abandoned airfields mainly because they have never been redeveloped. Some still have the old advertising in them from the 40's/50's.

    Just something I thought some people might find interesting...
  • Most are private use only .. only other reason are for emergency landing purposes.

    Also, the definition of a airfield is pretty loose. A lot of them are just large fields .. not even paved or gravel. So unless you REALLY need to land I wouldn't recommend using them.

    Only one I've payed any attention to was the one at Disney World .. It's still listed on the relevent maps, even though the southern end of it has been made into a mini-indy racetrack.

  • See the Gimlli Glider Story for instant reuse (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dmanny ( 573844 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @10:18AM (#5319251)
    If you are unfamiliar with the story of the Gimli Glider and it rather urgenty, unannounced re-use of an airfield see here [wadenelson.com]. Additionally the phrase "Gimli Glider" is sufficiently unique for googling purposes.

    See, planes can share a strip with autosports......

  • Wow...maybe you can get a consortium together to buy a fiew old airfields, some of ICBM silos [slashdot.org] and some hardened microwave tower bunkers [slashdot.org] and you could start up your own small military.
  • I was hunting on some property a friend of mine owns and here in the middle of this field is a tattered old wind sock and a broken down hanger. I checked an old USGS map and there it was, some old airfield.

    A much different experience was seeing the massive B-29 airfields on the island of Guam. I suppose they have been turned into tourist hotels and streets by now.
  • "It's rather amazing how many small unknown airfields dot the landscape."

    I don't know what this has to do with news for nerds or stuff that actually matters, but for that matter, it's intereting how many small still-known and still-used airfields dot the landscape. I live in Tampa, Fl. We have a private airfield that actually crosses I-75 (Major north-sounth route through central florida), we have a private airfield by the bay, one 15 minutes away in plant city (pop. about 20k), another about 35-40 min. in lakeland, not even to mention Tampa Itn'l Airport, St. Pete airport 20 min west of TIA, Sarasota Int'l airport about 1.5hrs south. They're just everywhere. It's crazy.
    • Speaking of roads that cross airfields... one of the main drags in the San Fernando Valley goes under a stretch of airport. Right above the mouth of the tunnel, there's often parked a midsize jet, with its tail hanging over the street. One day some wag left a pile of filled brown plastic garbage bags right underneath it. Wish I'd had a camera with me. :)

  • Interesting site ./effect and unspoken warning! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by reality-bytes ( 119275 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @10:31AM (#5319325) Homepage
    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.
    • Lots of rural airstrips never had tarmac in the first place -- they were always grass or dirt, and maintained as well as whoever most often uses them cares to bother. Some are kept completely smooth, others make you wonder if someone recently bombed 'em. Some have reflective markers from end to end, with others you're lucky to have a row of rocks indicating where someone got tired of moving rocks.

      Funny story involving tarmac: the Bozeman/Belgrade MT airport (which I used to live right next to) has a "retired" area that is now used for training the local fire dept. One day they set a practice grass fire, sortof failing to notice the adjacent and overgrown asphalt runway -- which caught fire. We had great gobs of black smoke for 3 days, til they finally got it put out.

  • Don't just stop with abandoned airfields. Some times it's interesting to find out where airfields used to be. In Toronto, I bumped into a couple of references to a Leaside airfield. Long gone, and about the only place that I can think of were it was is the East York Town Centre (shopping maul). If I can ever track down exact references, I might suggest to the mall people that a plaque or photo might make a nice display. Hmm, there's people alive who must remember where the airfield was.

    And then there's the US Interstate highways with mandated straight stretches to allow landing planes, but that hardly counts.

  • Many of these are still in use. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BWJones ( 18351 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @10:33AM (#5319342) Homepage Journal
    Some years ago a friend and I were flying out to Wendover airfield in Utah for a weekend of drinking and blackjack at the casinos there. (Hey, we were 21 at the time and had nothing else better to do with our time that weekend). Wendover field was where the crews for the planes that dropped the first atomic bomb trained (and believe it or not, some of the craters of the big conventional bombs have filled in with hot spring water making decent winter scuba destinations). At any rate, we were flying west and getting ready for the routine radio call announcing our intentions to land and flight path (Wendover does not have a tower), when we get this radio message saying "Wendover flight control" telling us not to deviate from our current flight path and to announce our intentions and destination. We do and they give us explicit instructions on which runway to land on and NOT to deviate from those instructions.

    We got to Wendover and as we flew over, there was a tremendous amount of military activity with F-16's parked on the tarmac and one of the runways, a couple of CH-53's and armed troops all over the place. We taxied up, tied the plane down and proceeded to walk back to the "pilots lounge" to close our flight plan when we were stopped by a private who demonstrated convincingly he was locked and loaded. I eventually calmed him down by asking for his superior officer to get his ass out there and to lower his weapon when one of the F-16 pilots came out apologizing and explaining things were a little tense after his plane and another lost engine power forcing his wingman to eject over the test range. He managed to bring his plane to Wendover and was the F-16 parked on one of the runways with the hole blown in the top half of the fuselage.

    Weird. We were allowed to go on our way, and came back to the Wendover airport the next day to fly home only to find everyone gone. Our plane was the only thing on the tarmac and we never did hear what happened other than there was an F-16 lost over the west desert.

  • Nuclear aircraft hanger is mentioned (Score:4, Interesting)

    by eclectro ( 227083 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @10:34AM (#5319346)

    I was always wondering about this. The history is quite interesting and thorough. It's located in Idaho [tripod.com]. It's where they developed the nuclear jet engine.

    Sadly, the website has exceeded it's alloted slashdotting (it's tripod), but it's worth going back for the read.

  • Ran across? I think you mean... (Score:3, Funny)

    by AndroidCat ( 229562 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @10:36AM (#5319361) Homepage
    I ran across this page doing some research

    I think we just ran over that page. :^)

  • Histories of Norwood, MA... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @10:58AM (#5319499) Homepage
    ...which has an active, bustling little general-aviation airport--unlike the abandoned one in nearby Canton, MA--make it quite clear that in the late years of the Roaring Twenties, the local developers had Big Plans for the town. They were very proud of the airport; it was one of the things that was going to put Norwood on the map. The crash of 1929 modified a lot of those plans.

    I suspect that a lot of little airfields may have started in the same way--when aviation was new, and land was plentiful and cheap--perhaps a lot of towns put them in hoping to get in on the ground floor.

    Of course, there's an amazing amount of abandoned STUFF all over the place. Every place has its "lost cities" and ghost towns. Road systems for developments that were never built, military installations that were abandoned, etc. etc. It's just that anything abandoned rapidly becomes invisible--names vanish even from the topographic map, and unless you investigate on the ground or are curious about aerial photos, how are you ever going to know they are there?

  • ...all your abandoned airfield are belong to us!

  • airnav.com (Score:2, Informative)

    by black_widow ( 41044 )
    at airnav.com [airnav.com] you can browse by state, search by city, etc...

  • More information can be found at:

    http://www.aopa.org

    AOPA (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association)lobbies to keep airports open and keep down the cost of flying.

    Flying is a lot of fun. If you like flight simulators, you can try the real thing for about $50 at almost any small airport.

  • Map of public and private airports (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SiliconEntity ( 448450 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @12:52PM (#5320254)
    Here's a site promoting General Aviation with a map of public and private airports [gaservingamerica.org] (click on the link near the bottom to see the map). According to the map, there are 5,400 public-use airports in the U.S. compared to 12,945 private airports. (And only 30 airports handle 70% of airline traffic.) Pretty interesting site for information about light planes.

  • other stuff to look at (Score:3, Informative)

    by cr@ckwhore ( 165454 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @03:33PM (#5321249) Homepage
    Here are some other sites to look at along the same theme as the abandoned airfields site...

    http://www.nelsap.org - New England Lost Ski Areas Project

    http://www.coloradoskihistory.com/History.html - has a page about "lost" ski areas in Colorado

    http://www.forgotten-ny.com - good site for the lost treasures that are hidden around in the urban decay of New York

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