KNKX/NKX - Miramar Marine Corps Air Station - Mitscher Field

San Diego, United States

Marine Corps Air Station Miramar (MCAS Miramar) (IATA: NKX, ICAO: KNKX, FAA LID: NKX) is a United States Marine Corps installation that is home to the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, which is the aviation element of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. It is located in Miramar, a community of San Diego, California, about 14 miles (23 km) north of downtown San Diego. The airfield has been named Mitscher Field since 1955, after Admiral M.A. Mitscher, who was the commander of Task Force 58 during World War II. The air station is the former location of Pacific Fleet fighter and Airborne Early Warning and Control aircraft (F-4 Phantom II, F-14 Tomcat, E-2 Hawkeye) and is best known as the former location of the United States Navy Fighter Weapons School (NFWS), its TOPGUN training program and the movie of the same name.

(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: