The Ghost Airport Collection is a collection of forty-seven Pennsylvania airports for FSX that used to exist but now are gone or virtually gone. These airports are now malls or shopping centers, industrial complexes, housing developments, parks, schools/universities, farm land, etc, etc. In some cases the airport is still recognizable but unused or partially used for another purpose.
All the airports in this collection fit that criteria. Many airports that comprise this collection came from a March 1940 Cleveland sectional chart I inherited from my father. There are airports that existed in 1940 and still exist as an airport in one form or another today. Those airports still in existence are not ghost airports.
Signs of their existence are still there today like at the former location of Bettis airport near Pittsburgh (now the Southland Shopping Center) that has a nearby street named, Luscombe Lane. I bet that many residents of that street who lack an aviation background do not realize the significance of that name. In one case an airport became a housing development and the runway became the main road in the development. To preserve the heritage of the land, they named the main road, Runway Avenue. Oil City's Splane Memorial Airport still exists in whole but is used as the city's composting facility.
These airports have been built in FSX using aerial photographs from Penn Pilot (www.pennpilot.psu.edu) and with great deal of aid from Google Earth. A web site called Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields was also exceptionally helpful. You will need to use a little imagination when visiting these airports because I used only stock buildings that come with Airport Design Editor library.
These airports were built using Airport Design Editor v1.47.7. In the era of the airports represented here, the average runway was a two thousand foot grass strip. Even the paved fields average length was around two thousand feet. Some of these airports were built by the government for use by the air mail pilots. In most cases they obtained the use of some farm field/pasture land and kept it somewhat mowed (not over knee-high). They used the flying field concept where pilots landed whatever way they had enough length and was mostly into the wind. Designate an official runway?---Naw! The runways were often laid out over mildly rolling hills.
Rolling hills is a function where Flight Simulator has a bit of a handicap. You can leave the natural (digitized) lay of the land in place but it tends to be pointy and uneven making for some bumpy landings. Where the polygons intersect, the transition is not always smooth and a wheel or the landing gear may disappear into the ground. As a result, in most cases, I have opted to flatten the terrain. This results in both positive and negative embankments at the edge of the airport. While these cases do not represent 100% the actual airport appearance, they work better than the un-flattened version.
In the updated versions included in Update 6, several of the airports are now un-flattened. I have developed a method that allows the airports to follow the surrounding terrain. I used this method at airport that generated large embankments. There were airports where they must have built up/cut down the exiting terrain because using the natural terrain would result in exceedingly steep slopes on the runways. At a couple of airports, when the aircraft reach certain spots on the runway, they would be totally below the runway surface. I had to leave airports like that flattened.
There is at least one airport that is missing one of the runway starts. This was caused from the runway start being set (automatically) at airport elevation, ten feet below the surrounding terrain. FSX tries to resolve the difference between the start point and the terrain and creates an area of tall grass where the landing gear disappears and the aircraft seems to sink in to the grass up to the bottom of the doors.
I have tried to find the original identifiers for these airports. I have only found Oil City's identifier (KOIL) and Scranton Municipal's (KSCR) so far. I contacted the office of Penndot that licenses airports but they said they archive records that old in a warehouse making them virtually unavailable. They are not even sure they used identifiers for all airports of that era. Flight Simulator requires an identifier for each airport so I just made up identifiers for most of these airports. Those identifiers I made up are, in reality, identifiers for heliports that are not used in FSX. If anybody has information on what the real identifiers for any of the ghost airports were, please let me know.
Installation:
This is very simple. Just unzip the downloaded file and put all resulting .BGL files in ~~microsoft flight simulator X\addon scenery\scenery. Let the new files overwrite the old files.
For your convenience, Update 6 includes the latest versions of all airports (except Waynesboro) in the Ghost Airports Pennsylvania Collection. If you have missed any previous updates, this will bring your Ghost Airports Pennsylvania collection up to date whether there was an actual update to a particular airport for Update 6 or not.
IMPORTANT: If you still have Scranton Municipal scenery files that start with KSCN, you must go into the folder where the addon scenery files are located (usually that is ~~microsoft flight simulator X\addon scenery\scenery) and remove the two files that begin with KSCN so that they do not compete with the new version of that airport that has the corrected identifier KSCR.
Here is a list of the airports in this collection:
5D7 Aliquippa Hopewell Aliquippa PA
KBDV Mayer Bridgeville PA
KBTT Bettis Pittsburgh PA
KDUB DuBois DuBois PA
KGRV Grove City Grove City PA
KHEM Harri-Emery Bradford PA
KMCR Mercer Mercer PA
KOIL Splane Memorial Oil City PA
KPNX Punx-Brae Marchand PA
KSRG Kearsarge Erie PA
KSCR Scranton Municipal Scranton PA
KTSV Col. Drake Titusville PA
KWAR Warren Warren PA
KWYB Waynesboro Waynesboro PA
P99N Peterson Memorial Tipton PA
PA10 State College Boalsburg PA
PA11 Taylorville Ashland PA
PA12 Benninger Tionesta PA
PA13 Erie County (old) Fairview PA
PA26 Keystone Emporium PA
PA28 Leechburg Leechburg PA
PA29 Blain Blain PA
PA34 Seneca Airpark Seneca PA
PA37 Patterson Heights Beaver Falls PA
PA41 Emlenton Emlenton PA
PA93 Conneaut Lake Conneaut Lake PA
PA94 Kylertown/Ames Kylertown PA
PA99 Old Franklin Franklin PA
PN23 Rodgers Field Fox Chapel PA
PN26 New Holland New Holland PA
PN28 Pittsburgh Greensburg Greensburg PA
PN41 Clearfield Clearfield PA
PN42 Brookville Brookville PA
PN44 Roulette Roulette PA
PN45 Penn Mead Meadville PA
PN51 Conway Conway PA
PN58 Buckstown Buckstown PA
PN60 Johnston (East Pittsburgh) Monroeville PA
PN63 Pierce Auxiliary Sharpsville PA
PN70 Hamilton Indiana PA PA
PN75 State College State College PA
PN77 Matamoras Matamoras PA
PN78 Vandergrift Vandergrift PA
PN80 Pitt-Wilkins Monroeville PA
PN88 Rhea Clarion PA
PN94 Kane Auxiliary Kane PA
Aliquippa Hopewell (5D7):
This airport, located about five northwest of Greater Pittsburgh, on a hill top catty-corner across the valley intersection from the hillside where USAir flight 427 crashed. Originally, Aliquippa Hopewell had two grass runways. Later they went to a single paved fifteen hundred foot north/south runway that lined up with the access notch they had in the Greater Pittsburgh control zone.
The airport boasted a factory where they produced the Volaire 100, This design was eventually sold to Rockwell and produced as the Aero Commander 100 The AC100 evolved into the Darter Commander and later the more powerful Lark Commander.
Update 6 makes no changes at Aliquippa Hopewell airport.
*********************************************************************************************************
Altoona (KALT):
Located outside of Altoona near a little village called Duncansville, this typical little airport boasted some fancy artwork on the surface of the field that included the airport name.
Update 6 makes no changes at Altoona Airport.
*********************************************************************************************************
Mayer (KBDV):
Located at Bridgeville, PA, this was Pittsburgh's first airport. It was built and owned by a local brickmaker named Casper Mayer who had a great interest in aviation. It was your basic flying field configuration designed to accommodate the biplanes of the day. It eventually had two designated runways the longest of which measured sixteen hundred feet.
Update 6 makes no changes at Mayer airport.
Below is Ryan NC4398 among what looks like an admiring crowd. The annotation on the picture reads, "Casper P. Mayers First Ryan, Mahoney-Ryan B-1, Wright R-790 (J-5-9) 220 HP, C4398 c/n 71, Mr. Mayer, Walt Chambers and Mayers pilot, J. Warren Smith. Mayer Field Bridgeville, PA 1928".
Bettis (KBTT):
This was Pittsburgh's second airport. It served during the 1920's and 1930's. Its two thousand foot runways restricted its practical use to that period.
Choosing a runway configuration to model was not simple. The airport evolved over the years and when they did pave runways, they did not pave the entire extent of the grass runways. I chose the apparent longest grass configuration. Bettis was replaced by the largest airport in the nation (at that time), Allegheny County Airport which was built only a mile away. Bettis continued to serve aviation as the home of Pittsburgh Institute of Aeronautics for years after the airport closed.
An interesting aside to this story is the 1938 aerial photo of Allegheny County Airport shows four intersecting runways. The eight runway ends were not identified according to magnetic heading. They were simply numbered 1 through 8. I do not know if they actually used that numbering system or if this photo was doctored for some other purpose. All I know is that is the way it shows up on the Penn Pilot database.
Update 6 makes no changes at Bettis airport.
*********************************************************************************************************
Dubois (KDUB):
This airport was close to the town of Dubois and was eventually replaced by the Dubois Jefferson airport (DUJ) that was built in a less congested area. The update improves road structure. If you search for Schwans Foods in Dubois, PA on Google Earth, you can just barely make out the airport outline.
Update 6 makes no changes at Dubois airport.
*********************************************************************************************************
Grove City (KGRV):
This privately owned paved airport served Grove City for years. In the 1970's it appeared on the charts as a restricted airport. It eventually closed and Grove City built the new Grove City airport (29D).
Update 6 makes no changes at Grove City airport.
*********************************************************************************************************
Harri-Emery (KHEM):
This early airport served Bradford, PA from the 1920's to the 1970's. This airport was the home of the Taylor brothers airplane manufacturing facility where the early Taylor Cubs were produced. In 1931 the Taylor brothers were forced into bankruptcy due to a slump in sales. That is when the Piper Cub was born.
This airport continued to serve Bradford until it closed in 1971. Some fliers continued to use the field after it was officially closed. By 1977 it was part of the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford campus. The original hangar still exists and houses the student union.
Update 6 makes no changes at Harri-Emery airport.
*********************************************************************************************************
Mercer (KMCR):
This was one of the federally funded airports established to support the U.S. Air mail system. It had an airway beacon light on the field and a low-frequency range station nearby. When government support dried up, local support just was not there and this airport faded into history. In the ensuing years someone built a narrow private strip across the road from the site of the Mercer airport. The cut through the woods for that airport can still be seen on Google Earth. I never knew that airport to be licensed.
Update 6 makes no changes at Mercer airport.
*********************************************************************************************************
Splane Memorial (KOIL<-the real identifier):
This airport near Oil City, PA served as the focus of aviation for most of Venango county in the 1930's and 1940's. It began as a function of the Oil City Aero Club and benefited from the generosity of a local donor whose son had died in WWI hence the name Splane Memorial.
The Oil City Aero Club wanted to get the airport set up as a municipal function so it could qualify for WPA funding. The funding was obtained and WPA built a single two thousand foot paved runway and a hangar. When it opened, KOIL had the only paved runway between Pittsburgh and Buffalo.
After the big hangar burned down and the county decided to throw its support behind an airport site near Franklin (the county seat), the fate of KOIL was sealed. The airport managed to remain in existence until 1972. The city of Oil City now uses the site as its composting facility.
The form of the airport can clearly be seen on Google Earth at:
41:28:53 N
79:44:41 W.
My original version was built from details available from Google Earth. The second version represents KOIL as it appeared in the 1938 aerial photograph from Penn Pilot.
Update 6 corrects some minor pavement mismatches and improves listing by correcting a misspelling.
*********************************************************************************************************
Punx-Brae (KPNX):
This airport served Punxsutawney, PA for several years. I have no information about this field. It closed and was replaced by the current Punxsutawney airport.
Update 6 makes no changes at Punx Brae airport.
*********************************************************************************************************
Kearsarge (KRSG):
This airport was built in the 1950's to serve the Erie, PA area as an alternative to the larger, more commercial, Erie airport. The airport closed in the 1960's and the land sold to a developer. It is now the location of the original part of the Millcreek Mall. The overgrown area west (left) of the airport is now Millcreek Mall II.
Update 6 improves airport listing by correcting a misspelling.
*********************************************************************************************************
Scranton Municipal (KSCR):
This airport was opened as the Schultzville Airport. In 1928 it became Port Scranton Airport. Eventually it was renamed Scranton Municipal. It was replaced in function by the Wilkes Barre Scranton Airport (AVP) and eventually fully closed in 1979.
Update 6 makes no changes at Scranton Municipal airport.
*********************************************************************************************************
Col. Drake (KTSV):
This is the old Titusville airport. I have not found much information about this field. It was named for Edwin Drake the man who developed the method of extracting petroleum from the earth. This happened in Titusville in 1859 and gave birth to the oil industry.
In order to give Drake more stature in Titusville while he was conducting his initial experiments, the principles of the company he worked for back in New York and Connecticut addressed his mail to Col. Edwin Drake. In reality, his greatest achievement up until that time was becoming a conductor on the New Haven Railroad, a position he was unable to keep.
Update 6 makes no changes at Col. Drake Airport.
*********************************************************************************************************
Warren (KWAR):
This airport looks like it may have been one of those land any way you want airports initially. In 1938 it consisted of two grass runways which is the way I modeled it. Eventually WPA came in and built a single two thousand foot paved runway and a hangar. They also built a dike around the airport to protect it from flooding.
Update 6 makes no changes at Warren airport.
*********************************************************************************************************
Waynesboro:
Originally Worley Field, this airport became Waynesboro Municipal airport after an infusion of WPA funding and funding from several local sponsors built hangars, offices and two paved runways. It lasted less than fifteen years after its makeover. When the government canceled GI Bill flight training, the airport closed within a year.
The FSX version of this airport looks a little weird because a nearby airport (5PN5) was licensed with an incorrect field elevation. The listed field elevation is 240'. Google Earth shows it should be about 500' higher. This means, for Flight Simulator users, 5PN5 causes Flight Simulator to create a five hundred foot deep crater in the surrounding terrain with a gentle enough slope to the sides that it looks pretty natural. Waynesboro airport is on that slope that is created so it has tremendous positive and negative embankments around much of the airport that look really strange. I have included an unfinished version of this airport with the field elevation set to 500' so you can see the scope of the problem. You can imagine the cliff it would create if the airport was set to the correct altitude (over 700'). Ironically, the offending airport now appears on Google Earth to be a Wal Mart Supercenter.
This almost goes without saying: No changes required for Update 6 at Waynesboro
*********************************************************************************************************
Peterson Memorial (P99N):
This airport is located at Tipton, PA, near Bellwood, PA which is just up the valley from Altoona. This airport was originally Stultz Field. Paul Peterson bought it but subsequently sold the airport to a company that wanted to build a factory. Mr. Peterson took his money and bought an old racetrack located adjacent to the Stultz property and built a new airport there. I built both airports but built Stultz as a closed airport.
Peterson Memorial is named for Paul Peterson Jr. who was killed when he slipped on some ice while hand propping a UPF-7 at the original airport.
If you had time to listen to Paul Peterson Sr.'s stories, you would find him a very interesting man. He was one of this nation's first airline pilots and seemed to know everybody who was anybody in early aviation.
Update 6 makes no changes at Peterson airport.
*********************************************************************************************************
State College (PA10):
While it is listed on the sectional chart as just State College, old timers around there say it was the original State College Air Depot. During its life the airport went through several changes in size and layout. It appears that as land or access to land was acquired or lost, runways were added or closed.
The US322 bypass now goes right through the site of this airport so a short segment of that road had to be interrupted to place this airport.
When this airport closed just after WWII, the owner set up shop at another location southwest of State College. I have that airport modeled also.
Update 6 makes no changes at the State College airport.
*********************************************************************************************************
Taylorville (PA11):
This airport was located near a small village named Taylorville but has an Ashland zip code. I do not know for certain what its name was. For the purpose of the naming convention used in Flight Simulator, I used the nearby village as the airport name and the nearest town with a post office as the city location. I found it by doing a search for Airport Road in Penn Pilot.
Update 6 makes no changes at Taylorville airport.
*********************************************************************************************************
Benninger (PA12): This airport was built behind a restaurant with an aviation theme. The restaurant had a PT-19 on the roof which you can see in the Penn Pilot 1958 aerial photo of the area.
Update 6 makes no changes at Benninger airport.
*********************************************************************************************************
Erie County (PA13):
This is the old Erie County and not related to the new Erie County Airport (3G1). It was located in Fairview southwest of Erie. It was run by the Kudlak brothers who eventually moved to the Erie airport and started Erie Airways.
Update 6 re-flattens the airport terrain as there were too many instances of airplanes sinking into the field surface.
*********************************************************************************************************
Keystone (PA26):
This somewhat narrow triangular airport served Emporium, PA. I am not sure how long it was there. It appeared on the 1938 aerial photos. Then the nearby creek crossed under the road leading out of town and passed north of the highway and airfield. The runway was near the road with the hangars farther in on the field. The 1958 aerial photo shows the creek had been diverted south of the airport and the bridge on the main highway eliminated. The hangars are shown closer to the highway and the runway is farther in on the airfield next to the creek. That is the version I modeled. Sitting on the ground at this field, everything seemed like it was above you.
The 1968 aerial photo shows an industrial facility at the site.
Update 6 makes no changes at Keystone airport.
*********************************************************************************************************
Leechburg (PA28):
This airport served the Leechburg area for many years. If you search for Cantor Lane, Leechburg, PA with Google Earth you can still see (as of May 2012) the checkerboard roof of the old hangar.
Update 6 makes no changes at Leechburg airport.
*********************************************************************************************************
Blain (PA29):
I do not know anything about this little airport west of Harrisburg. I found it searching for Airport Road. This airport has the airport indicator with a Keystone in it. Maybe a private airport that belonged to some Pennsylvania state senator.
There was a mystery surrounding this airport. Why would somebody come out to the middle of farming country in central Pennsylvania and build an airport like this with no hangars or FBO office? Additionally, I found it odd there were no aircraft parked on the field.
While studying the roads around the airport during the Update 5 process, I stumbled upon the answer to the mystery. I noticed the object near the southwest corner of runway 1 (near lower left corner of picture above) was not just a windsock as I had initially determined it to be. On closer inspection, I realized it was a lighted airway beacon. Now this airport made sense. This was an auxiliary airfield, part of the Federal Lighted Airway system built in the 1920s to support the airmail system.
More on Blain: I had never even heard of Blain, PA until I did this collection of airports. Now, not only had I heard of it, I even knew its location when it made national headlines March 9, 2011 because seven children tragically perished in a fire at a house in Blain.
Update 6 makes no changes at Blain airport.
*********************************************************************************************************
Seneca Airpark (PA34):
Located in Seneca, a suburb of Oil City, this airport primarily served the Oil City area It was opened in the late 1940's as a two grass runway commercial airport with a FBO. It closed during the fifties. It was reborn in the 1970's when the owner sold part of the east/west runway for a housing development, paved the north/south runway and reopened it as an aircraft home base with no FBO. In the late eighties or early nineties, it was closed again but the runway is still there. I have modeled it as the original Seneca Airpark.
Update 6 improves scenery listing by correcting a misspelling.
*********************************************************************************************************
Patterson Heights (PA37):
This airport served the Beaver Falls area in the thirties and forties. It was eventually absorbed by the local golf course. I cannot find a definitive description of the life span of this airport.
It is interesting to note the airport appears to be divided into two parts. A secondary portion of the field appears to be across the road from the primary field. It appears aircraft taxied across the road to use the secondary portion.
That secondary portion seems to have quite a drop-off at its western extent. I could not reasonably use flattening on that portion so the western portion suffers a bit from that pointy lumpiness.
The following is an article from the Pittsburgh Press that mentions Patterson Heights Airport:
Pittsburgh Press: December 1, 1941
100 BRAVE RAIN FOR AIR TOUR
Baden Youth Wins Trophy In Oil City Trip
Nearly 100 of Western Pennsylvania's citizen aviators braved rain squalls and "ceiling zero" visibility yesterday to participate in The Pittsburgh Press' first Air Tour Club Defense Flight to Oil City.
Fog and rain clouds which closed in over the entire Tri-State section, disrupting airline service in many cities, grounded scores of pilots who had planned to participate in the Defense Tour.
A 17-year old youth, Paul Moore, of 324 State St., Baden, copped first place and the silver trophy for accuracy in estimating his flight time in the Defense Efficiency Contest.
Flies Through Fog
Mr. Moore, forced to fly at times through fog and rain, landed at Splane memorial Airport only 11 seconds behind schedule. He flew alone from the Patterson Heights Airport, Beaver Falls.
Second place went to Mr. and Mrs. Paul Wild, 645 Boggs St., Pittsburgh, who landed at the Oil City field only one minute and ten seconds late. Third place was captured by Ralph P. Anderson, 43 North Linwood St., Crafton, and his .passenger, Miss Glenda. Fitch, who made the difficult l00-mile flight only five minutes behind schedule. Second and third place winners flew from Mayer Field, Bridgeville.
Speakers at the Air Tour Luncheon included Mayor John Payne, Oil City; Lee Gavin, Chamber of Commerce secretary; Frank Lucie, manager of Splane Memorial Airport; Harry V. Speigelman, secretary of the Oll City Aero Club; Dr. G. Pankratz, Franklin Aero Club, and Elmer Price of The Pittsburgh Press. Wilfred Rose, president of the Franklin Club, presided over the luncheon meeting.
Clubs Entertain
Members of the Oil City and Frankhn aviation clubs had prepared to entertain the largest single mass flight of citizen pilots ever assembled in Western Pennsylvania.
It was estimated that no less than 250 fliers and from 100 to 150 airplanes would have convened at Oil City if weather had proved more favorable.
A large percentage of pilots found their home airports closed in by fog early Sunday while many others started the flight only to be turned back midway."
Update 6 makes no changes at Patterson Heights airport.
*********************************************************************************************************
Bellefonte (PA38):
This is the old Bellefonte airport. It had a low frequency range station nearby. It was part of the early airmail support system the government maintained in the early years of the airmail experiment.
Update 6 makes no changes at old Bellefonte airport.
*********************************************************************************************************
Emlenton (PA41):
This airport was built to serve Emlenton, PA sometime after WWII and closed in the 1970's.
Update 6 makes no changes at Emlenton airport.
*********************************************************************************************************
Conneaut Lake (PA93):
This airport served Conneaut Lake from the 1950's until the 1980's. There is a reason the cutout for runway 5-23 looks crooked. It is crooked in my simulation because that is the way it was actually laid out. I do not know why it was that way. Maybe the surveyor had a few too many beers that day!
Update 6 makes no changes at Conneaut Lake airport.
*********************************************************************************************************
Kylertown/Ames (PA94):
Found on the March 1940 Sectional chart, this airport(s) is actually shown as two adjacent airports. My best guess is that the government wanted a support field there for the airmail system but Ames field with its 1500' runway did not meet their needs. For whatever reason, they chose to set up a completely new airport next door to Ames. The new field had no hangars or terminal building. It had no obvious parking areas. It just had runways. The Ames airport had all those support features that Kylertown airport lacked. The two airports did not appear to be separated by a fence or any other kind of barrier. An internet story about the airport said the airport was named for Charles Ames, an Air Mail pilot who died in a crash near Kylertown in 1925.
Once again, this field in the middle of Pennsylvania's nowhere, had a low frequency range station, a NDB, a rotating beacon and an airway beacon light.
In an internet story that mentions the Ames airport, the author speaks of United Airlines operating several flights a day out of this airport. The story also mentions a hangar on the field for the United DC-3s. This infers that they must have cross-connected the runways to provide a facility adequate for the United planes. It would seem Kylertown and Ames airports were really one airport.
Still, the airport boundary markers and the runway indicators on the airport indicator circle seemed to imply Kylertown Airport had only two runways located in the area that had no support facilities. I am guessing that Kylertown airport, in effect, may have existed only on paper as a means to get the government to fund an airport expansion.
Update 6 makes no changes at Kylertown airport.
*********************************************************************************************************
Old Franklin Airport Franklin, PA (PA99):
This airport was established in 1929 as a function of the Franklin Aircraft Corporation on a farm owned by one of the principles of that corporation. There seemed to be a close relationship between Franklin Aircraft Corporation and Joy Manufacturing, a maker of trackless mining machinery located in Franklin. Joy owned the building where Franklin Aircraft operated, most of the employees of Franklin Aircraft were current or former employees of Joy. Mr. L. G. Felderman, one of Franklin Aircraft's design engineers, went to work for Joy after Franklin Aircraft closed He eventually retired from Joy.
The Franklin Sport was built at the Buffalo St. facility in the city of Franklin. When an airplane was finished, it was hooked to the back of a pickup truck with racks to carry the wings and towed out to the hangar at the airport where it was assembled and flown.
In the Update 4 delivery ZIP file, I have included a video called Franklin Sport. In that video, you can see a Franklin Sport 90 in the background behind the intended subject. Then you can see the pilot getting into the rear cockpit. If you look closely, you can see two passengers in the front cockpit. The video shows the airplane being started and then the takeoff. This activity occurred at the Oil City Splane Memorial Airport around 1940. About five years later the hangar seen in the video burned down and the Franklin Sport was destroyed with it.
On the following page is an excerpt from a 1954 airshow program. The runway layout quoted in the airshow program is a physical impossibility. Looking at property lines that existed in 1939 it is difficult to give this airport any more than a 1700 foot runway. If you built a runway from road to road, you could only build a 2800 foot runway.
People who were there when the airport existed who I have interviewed say there was just one east-west runway. One of these people, a retired librarian, told me that, as a young girl, she and several of her friends were hired by the owner to pick up trash and pop bottles after an airshow.
Still, the only notoriety this airport gained is for being where the Franklin Sport aircraft were assembled and flown.
Here is the excerpt from the 1954 airshow program:
A SHORT HISTORY OF AVIATION IN FRANKLIN
Early Aviation in Franklin.
As written in the 1954 Franklin Junior Chamber of Commerce AIR SHOW Booklet by Marian J. Hoffman.
Aviation in Franklin had its beginning in 1929 when two local businessmen, Wayne W. Bleakley and Joseph McElhinney, Jr. became interested in and developed the first airport in this vicinity, located in Sugarcreek Township at the site of the present McElhinney farm and greenhouse. This airport consisted of two runways approximately 3800 feet long, running north-west and east-west, with a brick hangar erected thereon.
Some time later several local businessmen formed a corporation and under their direction and managership the airport continued in existence until 1938, at which time the field was abandoned due to lack of funds for necessary improvements in order to have it approved and licensed by the Civil Aeronautics Authority. It was reopened by members of the Franklin Aero Club in 1940 for a short period, but again, due to lack of funds for improvement to the field, the project was abandoned.
In May 1930, Mr. W.E. Barrow, together with his son, C.A. Barrow and J.P. Bauer founded the Franklin Aircraft Corporation with headquarters in one of the former Colburn Tool Company plant buildings located on Buffalo Street near Third and they manufactured what was known as the Franklin Sport Plane. This plane was assembled and test flown at the Franklin Airport. The Franklin Sport was a two-place, dual control sport biplane and at that time was considered the finest flying small plane on the market. The Franklin Aircraft Corporation operated for approximately two years, when they consolidated with the Taylor Aircraft Company in Lock Haven and moved all their equipment there.
Update 6 makes no changes at the Old Franklin Airport.
*********************************************************************************************************
Rodgers Field Fox Chapel, PA (new airport in the Ghost Airports collection) (PN23):
A few months ago, I stumbled on the mention of a Pittsburgh area airport that I never knew existed. As I looked into the matter, I noticed that the airport bore the same name as Cal Rodgers. Cal Rodgers was the man who gained fame in 1911 by making the first transcontinental flight starting from Sheepshead Bay on Long Island and ending near Huntington Beach, CA. It turns out Cal Rodgers was born in Pittsburgh. Rodgers Field was named the after the famous Pittsburgh native.
The history of Rodgers airport starts in May of 1911 when John Kowalsky of Verona took his new-fangled contraption (a flying machine) to a field near the present day location of Fox Chapel High School. That day Mr. Kowalsky became the first Pittsburgh area resident to successfully build and fly an airplane. Fourteen years later that field would become Rodgers Field, the first Allegheny County municipal airport.
Many events were held there including several air races and air derbies. Amelia Earhart, accompanied by her non-pilot publisher (and future husband), George Putnam, crashed her biplane there during one of those events. She hit an unseen ditch and the landing gear buckled.
Rodgers field had a short but busy lifespan. It served the Pittsburgh area from 1925 until it was replaced in 1931. Rodgers field was replaced by an airport that still operates today, Allegheny County airport.
Finding Rodgers field was a challenge. Not much was written about the field except for newspaper articles about events that took place at the airport or matters concerning the airport that came before Allegheny County Council. The writers of these articles, which were current events at the time, all assumed the readership knew where the airport was.
I did find an article about the history of a certain airplane that was based at Rodgers field in which the author put the airport at eight miles northwest of downtown Pittsburgh. I could find nothing in that area that betrayed the existence of any airport.
Another article I found mentioned that the airport was located near the present day site of Fox Chapel High School. Eight miles from downtown was about right but the high school was northeast of downtown Pittsburgh. Nothing in that area appeared to be a good airport site either.
A Google search for Rodgers Airport did turn up a Rodgers Drive and a West Rodgers Drive in an area across the road from the Fox Chapel High School. I had to wonder if the roads had been named to commemorate the former location of Rodgers field airport.
The trouble was the sole picture available for the airport did not fit easily into the area where Rodgers Drive was. Scanning the elevations of the land around Rodgers Drive with Google Earth showed the land poorly suited for building an airport.
I kept abandoning the Rodgers project to work on other projects. Finally, I was looking at the Rodgers field picture one day and noticed something I had previously overlooked. I noticed in the upper right of the photo there was a ridge line that was perfectly clear. The next ridge line behind that one was hazy and indistinct. Why was it so much different than ridge line just ahead of it? Then it hit me. It was simply much farther from the camera than the clear ridge line but what would suppress the ridge lines for such a great length? It was the Allegheny River valley!
Assuming the Rodgers Drive area to be the airport would put the Allegheny River to the left of the picture. I brought up the 1938 aerial photo of the area from Penn Pilot web page. I looked at the area across the road from the Rodgers Drive area. I assumed the layout to be opposite the positioning I used for the Rodgers Drive area. Bingo! There it was, somewhat obscured by overgrowth, but unmistakeably visible the runway pattern of Rodgers Airport. It was smaller than I expected but it definitely matched the Rodgers field picture.
I then noticed a house and elongated building across the road from the airport in the Rodgers field picture. It was a match to a house and building in the 1938 aerial photo. Tree lines matched. Rodgers field was finally found.
Rodgers field was located in an area that almost completely encircled by higher terrain. Get too wide on downwind to runway 16, you will not be able to see the airport. Takeoff from runway 11 requires an immediate right turn to avoid higher terrain. I do not see why they bothered with that secondary runway. In the 1920's, many airplanes had performance capabilities that were two steps above an ultralight. Maybe those airplanes that were well suited for this kind of airport made the Rodgers secondary viable.
I was able to get a Vickers Vimy, Ford Trimotor, Curtiss Condor and several single engine biplanes and monoplanes into and out of the field.
*********************************************************************************************************
New Holland (PN26):
I found this airport by searching for "Airport Road". It is located northeast of Lancaster, PA. The airport is now a housing development with two roads, one which appears to have the same centerline as the old runway is named "Runway Avenue" and the other named "Windsock Way".
Update 6 makes no changes at New Holland airport.
*********************************************************************************************************
Pittsburgh Greensburg (PN28):
When this early airport got hemmed in by development, local aviation interests moved down the road a little way to provide a less obstructed home base eventually for Arnold Palmer at the next town down the road called Latrobe. This airport has some nice graphics.
Update 6 makes no changes at Pittsburgh Greensburg airport.
*********************************************************************************************************
Clearfield (PN41):
The old Clearfield airport was there in 1940 when they did the aerial photos now available on Penn Pilot. It lasted into the 1970's. It was replaced by Clearfield-Lawrence Airport.
Update 6 makes no changes at Clearfield airport.
*********************************************************************************************************
Brookville (PN42):
This was an airport built on an abandoned racetrack and maintained for the airmail service. It once had two NDBs and was located right along a LF Range airway. It had a Lighted Airway beacon on the field and one nearby. Brookville had a fan marker and was a mandatory reporting point. It had a Flight Service Station and was an important part of the early air traffic control system. The locals, however, did not support the field. When airmail went to the big airports and the LF Range went the way of the buggy whips, CAA moved their FSS to the new Dubois Jefferson (DUJ) airport and the Brookville airport withered and died. It is now back to being farmland. A detailed story of this airport appears on the website: Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields.
Update 6 makes no changes at Brookville airport.
*********************************************************************************************************
Roulette (PN44):
This small airport existed just outside Roulette, PA. When you take off to the southeast in FSX, you will see another airport southeast of this field just as soon as you clear the trees. According to what I can see with Google Earth, that field (Ranch Aero) does not appear to be active at the present time.
Update 6 makes no changes at Roulette airport.
*********************************************************************************************************
Penn Mead (PN45):
This airport seemed to be an alternate airport for Meadville, PA. In 1940, it coexisted with Port Meadville airport (about a mile and a half south). It still looked pretty much intact in the May 1969 aerial photo available on Penn Pilot.
Update 6 makes no changes at Penn Mead airport.
*********************************************************************************************************
Conway Airport (PN51):
The Conway Airport operated in Conway Borough, northwest of Pittsburgh, PA, from 1920 to 1961. According to an aerial photo taken in 1938, there were two runways approximately 1300 feet in length. A later aerial photograph taken in 1958 shows the runways had been expanded in both size and number. I modeled the later configuration because it is more functional.
The Taylor Aircraft Company operated a production facility at the Conway Airport from 1947 through 1956, though the company headquarters moved to Connellsville, PA in 1950. The Conway plant produced the Taylorcraft Model 15A Foursome and Tourist side-by-side aircraft as well as various other models beginning in 1947.
After the airport closed, the hanger building, served as a grocery store then flea market. It was destroyed by a fire in the mid-to-late 1980s.
The manager of Conway airport, the late Joe Rabassi, was subsequently the well known and long-time manager of Beaver County airport (G01/BVI).
The Conway airport is near the Conway Rail Classification Yard. The yard is commemorated by the following historical marker from the Beaver County Historical Research and Landmark Foundation erected along Rt. 65 in Conway: "Conway Railroad Yards. Built on land of the Conway family farm. This yard was put in operation April 1887 under the ownership of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. The yards are over four miles in length with 100 tracks and capable of holding 5,000 cars. By 1957 it was the largest automated yard in the world".
Flight Simulator stock scenery designers made a credible attempt to model the Conway Rail Classification Yard which is no minor undertaking. It still falls considerably short of the real thing.
Update 6 makes no changes at Conway airport.
*********************************************************************************************************
Buckstown (PN58):
Not to be confused with Bucktown, this airport is right across the road (Rt. 30) from Indian Lake Airport. It is not far from the Flight 93 crash site at Shanksville, PA.
Update 6 makes no changes at Buckstown.
*********************************************************************************************************
Johnston (East Pittsburgh) (PN60):
East Pittsburgh Airfield (also called Johnston) does not appear to be present in an October 7, 1938 aerial photograph of the area. The airport is charted on the March 1940 Cleveland Sectional chart as Johnston.
Johnston airport was noted for its air shows that attracted hundreds of spectators and for handling the air mail for the Wilmerding Post Office. The airport was located in Monroeville north of Turtle Creek (the creek not the town) and just west of Pitcairn. The airport closed in the early 1970s.
Update 6 makes no changes at Johnston (East Pittsburgh).
*********************************************************************************************************
Pierce Auxiliary (PN63):
I am not exactly sure what the designation Auxiliary meant in 1940 but this airport was one of them. It was three runways with no buildings, no facilities and no airport markings.
Update 6 makes no changes at Pierce Auxiliary airport.
*********************************************************************************************************
Hamilton (PN70):
This airport served Indiana, PA. It is probably the Indiana airport Jimmy Stewart remembered. It was replaced by Indiana Jimmy Stewart Airport built not far from the site of the Hamilton Airport.
Update 6 makes no changes at Hamilton airport.
*********************************************************************************************************
State College Air Depot (PN75):
This airport served State College, PA from 1946 until 1987 and was a replacement for the original State College Air Depot.
Update 6 makes no changes at State College Air Depot.
*********************************************************************************************************
Matamoras (PN77):
Located in the easternmost corner of Pennsylvania where Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey come together, this airport served the Matamoras area since about 1929. Originally named the Merrill-Ronne Airport, it became the Matamoras airport in 1938. It was renamed Deverend Airport in 1976. It was closed around 1980. Why they only paved about half the runway length is not known.
Update 6 makes no changes at Matamoras.
*********************************************************************************************************
Vandergrift (PN78):
I found this airport on the March 1940 Sectional chart not far from the Leechburg airport. It served the Vandergrift area for an undetermined period from its beginning in 1928. It was still active in 1947 as the excerpts from the classified adds section of the Pittsburgh paper shows. It now serves the community as the site of Kiski High School. It was a little obstructed on several sides especially east through southeast.
Update 6 makes no changes for Vandergrift.
*********************************************************************************************************
Pitt-Wilkins (PN80):
Pitt-Wilkins opened in the early 1940's. It is located in Monroeville just north-northeast of Pitcairn, not far from Johnston airport,. It handled airmail deliveries for Pitcairn Post Office. Like at Johnston airport, a hook extended from the bottom of the mail plane was used to snatch the mail bag that was hung by the ground crew between two poles.
Sounds like there was a lot of activity at the airport but it closed in 1948 when the landowner's sister and her husband opened Pittsburgh Monroeville airport on the north side of town.
After the airport closed, it first became a model airplane airport where they flew radio control model airplanes and control line model airplanes. Noise complaints forced that facility to close and it became a Monroeville Park.
Update 6 makes no changes at Pitt-Wilkins airport.
*********************************************************************************************************
Rhea Clarion (PN88):
This airport was built by Mr. Claude Rhea sometime between when he purchased a portion of an old family farm for business development in 1953 and his death in 1956. He claimed the airport had a 2400' by 300' runway. In reality, if you try to place a true rectangular runway in that space, the best you can do is 2300'.
Included with the air strip was ~~~12 airplane hangars, an administration building and a repair and maintenance shop.
The full ownership history beyond Mr. Rhea is not known. It is known that at one point the airport was owned by a private individual, William G. Patterson.
Clarion county started an airport commission in 1967 to plan and construct the new county airport because a highway expansion project supposedly caused Rhea Airport to close (the highway project never got near the actual airport).
I found the path the railroad tracks took in that area quite interesting to the point I traced them into the scenery. The NYC track stayed down in the valley away from the airport. The B&O track ran up out of the valley, past Rhea airport and on toward Marienville.
Update 6 makes no changes at Rhea airport.
*********************************************************************************************************
Kane Auxiliary (PN94):
Another auxiliary field, this one in the heartland of small town Pennsylvania away from any city.
Update 6 makes no changes at Kane Auxiliary airport.
*******************************************************************************
If you count, there is actually forty-eight airports here but I consider Waynesboro a throwaway since it is unfinished, at the wrong elevation and generally not reproducible given the terrain problem in the native FSX database. I would personally recommend, once you have seen the mess this little licensing error caused, that you remove the two filenames containing KWYB from the
~~microsoft flight simulator X\addon scenery\scenery folder.
This package should give the nostalgia buffs something to work with. Go forth and have fun.
If anybody has any information about these airports (like identifiers), please let me know.
This scenery is released as Freeware. Copyright Richard O. Finley.
- As freeware you are permitted to distribute this archive subject to the following conditions:
- The archive must be distributed without modification to the contents of the archive. Redistributing this archive with any files added, removed or modified is prohibited.
- The inclusion of any individual file from this archive in another archive without the prior permission of the author is prohibited.
This means, for example, that you may not upload an archive that uses my scenery with your own scenery or include it in a package containing other scenery without first obtaining the author's permission.
- No charge may be made for this archive other than that to cover the cost of its distribution. If a fee is charged it must be made clear to the purchaser that the archive is freeware and that the fee is to cover the distributor's costs of providing the archive.
- The authors' rights and wishes concerning this archive must be respected.
Copyright 2012 by Richard O. Finley. All Rights Reserved.
Richard O. Finley
ksfrof@gmail.com
