Abandoned and Little-Known Airfields
airfields-freeman.comI'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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
I adore this kind of websites. Dedicated to a lifelong hobby. We need more of that.
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!
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.