KBKF/BFK - Buckley Air Force Base

Aurora, United States

Buckley Space Force Base (IATA: BFK, ICAO: KBKF, FAA LID: BKF) is a United States Space Force base in Aurora, Colorado named after United States Army Air Service First Lieutenant John Harold Buckley. The base is run by Space Base Delta 2, with major units including the U.S. Space Force's Space Delta 4 (flies the Defense Support Program and Space-Based Infrared System constellations from Buckley SFB and commands the Space Force's missile warning forces), the Colorado Air National Guard's 140th Wing (flies the F-16C Fighting Falcon), the Denver Naval Operations Support Center, and the National Reconnaissance Office's Aerospace Data Facility-Colorado. Buckley was established in 1938 by the United States Army Air Corps as Demolition Bombing Range–Lowry Auxiliary Field, before being renamed Buckley Field in 1941, serving as a training base.

(Airport Infos by Wikipedia)

Open current view/airport in an external service:

Google Maps
OurAirports.com

Random Airports

This app shows satellite views of random airports. Its aim is to introduce you to the variety of airport structures embedded into the landscape.

Usage

Click on the satellite image or on the button in the control panel to advance to another randomly selected airport.
Click on the button in the control panel to start auto play mode (every 30 seconds a random airport is loaded); Click on the button to stop the auto play mode.
Click on the button in the control panel to search for a specific airport by ICAO code, IATA code, airport name, or location name.
Click on the button in the control panel to show additional information about the current airport and to open the current view in a variety of external services (e.g. Google Maps).
Click on the button in the control panel to toggle fullscreen mode.
Unlike other mapping websites, it is not possible to change the view by panning it around with the mouse or to change the zoom factor.

Technologies and Data Sources

This app is based on the Google Maps API, which on the one hand provides a powerful programming interface for web-based mapping applications, and on the other hand opens access to high quality satellite imagery for places all over the world.

The backend is realized in Python with the help of the excellent Flask micro framework.

The locations of airports have been imported from the public domain data provided by the aviation enthusiasts at OurAirports.com. The app displays randomly selected airports of the categories 'large_airport','medium_airport' and 'small_airport' for which runway coordinates are available.

Furthermore, the user interface incorporates icons from Font Awesome and fonts from Google Fonts.

Author

This is brought to you by me, Florian Pigorsch. Feel free to contact me via mail. The source code of this app can be found at Github.

Backlinks

Random Airports has been featured on several websites including

the AvGeek Weekly Newsletter on 2015/01/16,
the Maps Mania blog on 2015/01/03

Some Examples

Here's a list of 10 random airports:

Random Airports

This app shows satellite views of random airports. Its aim is to introduce you to the variety of airport structures embedded into the landscape.

Click on the satellite image or on to advance to another randomly selected airport.
Click on start 'auto play' mode (every 30 seconds a random airport is loaded).
Click on to search for a specific airport.
Click on to show infos about the current airport.
Click on to toggle fullscreen mode.

Search for airports

You can search for ICAO-codes (4-letter airport codes, e.g. 'KSFO'), IATA-codes (3-letter airport codes, e.g. 'SFO'), airport and location names (e.g. 'San Francisco').
Search queries containing multiple words and/or non-alphanumeric characters may be problematic - try to keep your query simple (e.g. prefer 'Helsinki' to 'Helsinki Airport')!

Here's a list of 10 randomly selected airports: