PRESS RELEASE - 5 new Aviation Websites

PRESS RELEASE - FIVE new Aviation Websites from Delta Mike Airfield, Inc.  The way you view Aviation History is about to crank up to a whole new level!!!

Parks Airport Register, Part of Page 1 (Source: St. Louis University Library)

Check out these web-links to the five new aviation historical websites.

• Clover Field, Santa Monica, CA (www.cloverfield.org), 
• Grand Central Air Terminal, Glendale, CA (www.grandcentralairterminal.org), 
• Parks Airport, East St. Louis, IL (www.parksfield.org), 
• Peterson Field, Colorado Springs, CO (www.petersonfield.org) 
• Pitcairn Field, Willow Grove, PA (www.pitcairnfield.org).

http://www.parksfield.org/airplanes/NC113K/index.php

The images above are taken from the Parks Airport webpage.

What's up with all of this?....

You are about to be amazed by aviation history in a way you might never have imagined.  If you are a follower of this blog, you may have also heard about an excellent website called "DMAIRFIELD.ORG".    If you haven't, it is a must see for all those who enjoy reading and learning about aviation history. Truly an aviation treasure on the internet, the site is about an old, handwritten, leather-bound, airfield register.  The register's old pages evolved through the years in real-time by military, civilian, and commercial aviation operations of the day.  Noted aviation historian, Gary W. Hyatt, President - Delta Mike Airfield, Inc revived the old register into a living historical record.  Gary's unique website design is formed around an information database that Gary created from the register's handwritten entries.  Expanding from this database, Gary's not-for-profit company solicits and publishes historical photos, articles, short stories, trivia, news-clippings, and other aviation artifacts submitted from armchair historians like you and me.  The result is a compilation with interwoven links to information about the people, airplanes, and events that are related to the Davis Monthan Municipal Airfield in Tucson Arizona.

The success of the DMAirfield website has led Gary into new, but similar undertakings.  Check out this press release by Delta Mike Airfield, Inc. 

Great news to say the least!!  Way to go Gary! 

Again, here are the web-links to the five new websites.

• Clover Field, Santa Monica, CA (www.cloverfield.org), 
• Grand Central Air Terminal, Glendale, CA (www.grandcentralairterminal.org), 
• Parks Airport, East St. Louis, IL (www.parksfield.org), 
• Peterson Field, Colorado Springs, CO (www.petersonfield.org) 
• Pitcairn Field, Willow Grove, PA (www.pitcairnfield.org).

I am very happy for Gary to have achieved this milestone to bring all five of these registers to us.  It is undoubtedly the culmination of a monumental effort.  But the best part is that this is only the beginning.  From here, it will be interesting to watch these sites grow as the current DMAirfield site has grown.  

Personally, I plan to become a contributor mainly to the Parks Airport site, for which I have already collected a fair amount of historical information.  I am excited about this. I think the format of Gary's pages are ideal for armchair historians and enthusiasts like me who have limited time to compile their collections into a quality publication.  Gary and is great at taking the materials submitted and building them into a first class webpage.  In my opinion, Gary's database format of his website changes everything about the way we can search and use historical data.  It provides a medium of unlimited scale for aviation research to build upon itself by allowing the casual researcher an easy way to add and search for information. Researchers can now gain a broader understanding of history through the links among these regional airfields, events, pilots, and travelers.  So I encourage others to dig through their old clippings and collected airplane photos and send them in to Gary.

My kudos to Gary Hyatt:

Some time ago, Gary and I became friends through internet, email, and phone calls.  We have never met in person.  But through our correspondence I learned that Gary is passionate about aviation history and has a driven purpose to his work of educating people and sharing information about aviation history through his website. I have read  Gary's "airfield register" webpage concept was quite intriguing to me when I first saw it because I knew of another one that existed in the archives of Parks College, Saint Louis University.  The Parks Airport Register covers several years, starting in 1929 and well into the late 1930's from the gone (but not forgotten) airfield associated with Parks College in East St. Louis, Illinois.  I thought it would be great if a similar effort could be done to expose this register, so I mentioned this to Gary.  To my surprise, Gary was already on the trail of several other of these airport registers around the U.S. He told me of his plan to build several websites like the Davis Monthan site to greatly expand the historical information that could be drawn out of these unique documents. He was glad to learn of the Parks Register, which in its own right contains numerous records of interesting events and happenings of U.S. aviation.  We have kept in touch about this over the years.  To me, watching Gary build his databases and to bring these websites all into being at the same time is truly an amazing feat.  I personally believe that the aviation community owes a debt of gratitude to Gary for preserving this information for future generations.  Again.... Way to go, Gary!!