Airports (and more!) of New England (and beyond!)
December 4, 2015 7:11 AM   Subscribe

Airports (and more!) of New England (and beyond!)
I've undertaken a small project to photograph the airports of New England and along my usual flight routes down the mid-Atlantic.

Airplanes are pretty awesome. Airports are pretty awesome. Seeing airports from airplanes is pretty awesome.

This is sort of the latest iteration of a series of projects centered around the idea of collecting first-hand information about airports for general aviation pilots. I had a blog for awhile where I went and reviewed the facilities at small airports, I had another blog... and another blog... but this is much less energy-intensive. Fly by airport, take pictures, come home, develop, post.

Most photos are taken either by me or my wife. With an autopilot and smooth skies (and a camera with viewscreen) it's fairly safe to stick the camera out the window and take some photos while keeping hands on the controls. During high workload times (like the one or two shots on short final right before landing) I'll direct my wife. Sometimes I fly with other pilots in my flying club, and they do the airplane work while I control the camera.

I cover mostly Massachusetts and New Hampshire, but go from mid-coast Maine all the way to Philadelphia. Interspersed with the airport photos are general interest shots of (mostly) Massachusetts.
Role: pilot, photographer
posted by backseatpilot (9 comments total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
This project was posted to MetaFilter by filthy light thief on December 11, 2015: Aerial photos of airports, with a detour into abandoned airstrips

Oh this is so awesome. If you ever need a co-pilot / photographer to help and chortle with glee for the entire flight, MeMail me.

I love aerial photography and I especially love pictures of airports. Every time I fly commercially I spend the entire time looking out the window searching for airports, small and large.

I took lessons out of BED many years ago and our standard was to fly out to Fitchburg, have some breakfast and do touch and goes. We'd occasionally go to Lawrence (where I finally soloed) or Beverly. Once or twice we flew to Norwood and once I nearly shit my pants on approach to Minuteman, as we skidded right over the trees. I saw pine cones.

This one is kind of cool. Are those other runways? Drag strips?
posted by bondcliff at 8:14 AM on December 4, 2015


Hey, thanks! Always happy to have passengers.

Lakehurst is (still, I think) also a Naval research station. Those strips are, I believe, aircraft carrier arresting system test beds. This photo on Wikipedia is annotated.
posted by backseatpilot at 8:19 AM on December 4, 2015


This is spectacular! At a previous job I combed through a lot of satellite imagery, the various airport runway layouts were often a highlight of an frequently monotonous task.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 9:41 AM on December 4, 2015


All or just registered strips? I remember poking along/lost from eastern mass and noticing quite well cut private strip in the woods. (and then there's that hidden illegal black ops strip, but stay away, accidents seen to happen around there ;-)
posted by sammyo at 4:35 PM on December 6, 2015


It's been a little haphazard, but I've mostly been picking places I've actually landed at (around Boston, anyway). Navigational charts will show (registered?) private strips, so if I happen to be in the area and I have a free hand I'll try to grab a shot.
posted by backseatpilot at 5:13 AM on December 7, 2015


Neat project and lovely photos! I've taken my plane all over (back and forth across the country a few times plus Canada and the Bahamas), but have yet to visit New England with it.
posted by exogenous at 6:57 AM on December 9, 2015


Also, regarding the NATF test tracks for catapult systems at Lakehurst, there are a couple of cool photos of them here if you scroll down a ton. That airfields-freeman.com website "Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields" has a tremendous amount of interesting stuff if you are into that sort of thing.
posted by exogenous at 7:04 AM on December 9, 2015


Please come to Vermont and visit! Doing this was a dream of mine about five years ago, but life intervened. I may re-up my biennial this winter though.
posted by meinvt at 2:27 PM on December 11, 2015


I would meet you in Berlin (VT) and take you out to the Wayside!
posted by jessamyn at 7:28 PM on January 4, 2016


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