NO WHERE ELSE ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB IS THERE A SUITE OF WEB SITES THAT CELEBRATE THE HISTORY FOUND IN OLD AIRFIELD REGISTERS

DMAIRFIELD.ORG SPANS SIX RELATED, HYPERLINKED WEB SITES

The non-profit educational company Delta Mike Airfield, Inc. has offered aviation history through dmairfield.org since 2005.

Now, the company is pleased to make available this first and only extensive source of information about the pilots, passengers and airplanes recorded in the Airfield Registers tabulated and linked below. These sites bring new understanding to the relationships between the pioneers of aviation and their early airfields, and the mechanical wonders of their early aircraft.

WANT A QUICK INTRODUCTION TO THIS GROUP OF WEB SITES?

Click this WHAT'S NEW ON THE SITES? link.

Order FREE AUTOGRAPHED BOOKS.

These Web sites offer to you biographies of the people who signed the Registers, and technical descriptions of their aircraft, their itineraries and activities. All the sites are dynamically hyperlinked among themselves and to other Web sources that help you experience the Golden Age of Flight across the United States. So check the weather, pack a lunch, fuel up, strap in, pull your goggles down and Come Fly with DMAIRFIELD.ORG!

WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT

If you have followed the Davis-Monthan Airfield Register Web site since its beginning on May 4, 2005, you know the site contains over 15,000 pages of biographical and technical information about the Davis-Monthan Register signers and the machines they flew. All of this information is available through the buttons across the top and at the upper right of your screen on this and all the other Web pages.  

PT-? Training Aircraft, Davis-Monthan Airfield, 1927 (Source: George Monthan)

I have designed and implemented the new sites to operate like dmairfield.org. If you are a veteran site visitor, your learning curve should be nil as you travel cross-country from site to site -- California to Arizona to Colorado to Illinois to Pennsylvania.

For newcomers, the navigation secret is in the buttons at the top and right of the Web pages.  Instructions for NAVIGATING THE SITES are at the top of the right sidebar. The "Contact Webmaster" button on all sites delivers your comments and questions directly to my private mailbox. Please review my Privacy Policy and Code of Ethics statements, below left, if you have any concerns about corresponding with me.

The "What's New on the Site?" buttons on all sites will always list for you the most recent information I have placed online for that site. NOTE: If you get "lost" flying from one airfield to the next, just click the HOME button on any site to be brought back "home" safely, and to a copy of the table, above.

This suite of new Web sites offers historic windows into vintage aviation in the United States. In the scheme of things, the windows are very small.  The windows are open to us today as old, musty Registers – books – that lay open on desks at airfields across the country during the Golden Age of Aviation (see left sidebar, top).  Each interactive site is driven by databases I built from the handwritten records I found in the Airfield Registers. Now, embedded in the Web sites online, the databases form a rich, interactive environment for researching pilots, airplane registrations, and patterns of movement by people and machines across the United States between 1925 and 1942.

All together, my Web sites now analyze the history of over 22,000 Airfield Traffic Days during those years, across Airfield Registers that are trans-continental in scope. Each site stands alone, enhanced by many cross-linked references. Each is crafted as an attractive and engaging exposition of 20th century aviation history. Important linkages are made among them, and you'll find yourself transitioning (hopefully without jet lag!) from one Register and one part of the country to another.

Today, the Registers allow me to offer to you six, free, 24-hours per day Web sites. (If you do the math, that’s 144 Web hours per day of on-demand, Golden Age aviation history that people can access anywhere in the world!). Eventually, these additional Registers should more than sextuple the amount of information available to investigate and compare on the Web sites.

After you have spent time with my Web sites, if you are pleased with what you experience, and you want to aid my effort to present the Delta Mike Airfield brand of aviation history to the world, please consider the DONATE button in the right sidebar on any page to make a tax-exempt donation. Also, site-related products, and books I have written, are available through links in the left sidebar. One-hundred percent of donations and product profits support the Web sites.

These Web sites are the official sites of Delta Mike Airfield, Inc., and they are available on every continent.

WHO WERE THE PLAYERS AND HOW ARE THEY PRESENTED?

Each of the Registers was signed by Golden Age transient pilots and passengers; some rushed; some preoccupied by the next leg of their journey; some exhausted at the end of their trip.  Their signatures provide us with a rare record of their day-to-day flight activities.  They compel us today to understand what the pilots, passengers and their aircraft were doing at those places and times so long ago. As you explore the Registers, you’ll find their adventures comprise a sort of fractal history, where one path leads to another and another, and one story blends into the next.

What makes these interrelated Web sites most interesting is the window metaphor. In some cases, the view out the window of one airfield’s Register leads us to look into the window of another -- and sometimes back again or on to another Register. There is significant overlap of information from one Register to another. Start your journey by clicking the links and buttons above.

Without exception, all the Web sites present full-size, color images of all the individual Register pages (click THE REGISTER button, upper right on any Web page as you move through the sites). Pictured on the Register pages are each of the names, aircraft, places and events, written in the Register so long ago by transient pilots and passengers. These handwritten lines are the raw data for each site's infrastructure.

Further, I transcribed each Register line-by- line and recorded the contents in a database unique to each Web site. Through your individual queries using dropdown menus, I deliver to you from the databased information. For example, biographical information, or technical descriptions of aircraft, or the details of a Golden Age air race. Indeed, each site is database-driven. Each of your clicks on a dropdown menu is fulfilled uniquely from the information in a database. Because of this, your pathway of exploration through my sites will be uniquely different from the next visitor's pathway. There are literally many billions of ways to travel through my sites.

Supplemented by texts, databased information and hyperlinks, the breadth and depth of the impact the signers of the Registers made on early 20th century aviation becomes very clear. The information presented and links available can be riveting, poignant, outrageous, nauseating, shocking, funny, but always instructive. In all cases, humanity shines through. The pilots were people and they did what people do.

WHY ARE WE HERE?

U.S. Department of Commerce, Airfield Register Guideline, Ca. 1926 (Source: Webmaster)

The reason these hand-written Registers are with us today is that a guideline published in the mid-1920s by the Civil Aeronautics Administration suggested that a Register be kept at each airfield (a copy of the guideline is at right). At the end of the Registers’ lives, some history-minded people, or maybe hoarders, long-forgotten, saw fit to preserve these documents for the enjoyment of their posterity.

Airfield Registers are rare artifacts in the 21st century. The Registers, if they weren’t discarded, were easily overlooked. Basically, a worn, handwritten book just wasn’t as sexy as an endurance record, a shiny race trophy, or a sleek and fast airplane. Indeed, the Registers featured on these Web sites were overlooked for 80 years, until now. 

Because of the generosity of many individuals (cited on the HOME pages of each Register linked above) your Webmaster owns copies of these vintage airfield Registers (no originals: fortunately the originals I have examined are in safe archives).  Each Register holds attractive and unique histories, expressed as a tortuous scrawl of mixed handwritings ripe for our interpretation and study.  

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ABOUT DMAIRFIELD.ORG

DMAIRFIELD.ORG was the first Web site offered by the non-profit company. Since 2000, Delta Mike Airfield, Inc. has provided multimedia aviation history to the globe with a focus on the Register of the old Davis-Monthan Airfield, Tucson, AZ. As of the revision date of this page between 10,000 and 12,000 visitors per month enjoy dmairfield.org.

Opened to the global public on May 4, 2005, thousands of additions to the Web site have been made since then. Please direct your browser to the What's New on the Site? button at the bottom of any page to enjoy these additions.

Site visitors have enjoyed aviation history as presented on dmairfield.org. Read what site visitors say about their experiences with the suite of Web sites.

As of June 13, 2013, the "lucky 13th" anniversary of the Delta Mike Airfield, Inc. project, dmairfield.org is more than a single Web site. It is now a hub for travel through historical aviation. (Return to the Web sites tabulated above)

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THE GOALS OF THE DELTA MIKE AIRFIELD, INC. SUITE OF WEB SITES

Share with the global public the historically significant REGISTERS of key Golden Age airfields.

Research and celebrate the lives of the PEOPLE who signed the Registers.

Research, examine and describe the AIRCRAFT flown to the airfields.

Introduce and describe the PLACES and EVENTS they frequented.

Develop the suite of Web sites as resources for investigators and students of Golden Age aviation history.

Provide easy and open access to findings and analyses related to the Registers (REFERENCES).

Provide a forum where site guests can contribute to aviation history, as related to the pilots, airplanes, events and places cited in the Registers.

Make good-faith efforts to insure content of the sites is available to global citizens, regardless of nation.

Ensure the personal security of information shared by site visitors.

See more details in our CODE OF ETHICS and PRIVACY POLICY linked in the left sidebar.

PLEASE NOTE: The original Davis-Monthan Municipal Airfield, where the Register lived for a decade, and which is the focus and subject of this Web site, is in no way related, except in name and approximate geolocation, to the functions or operations of the present-day Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. Click on this link for a brief summary of the history and geography of the old Davis-Monthan Airfield.

A rotating, aerial view of the contemporary Davis-Monthan Air Force Base and the aircraft storage and restoration facility is at the link. If you stop the rotation at due west and zoom in as far as you can, you will see the area of the original Davis-Monthan Airfield far in the distance. The 1933 hangar is just visible at the edge of the property.

The Web sites of Delta Mike Airfield, Inc. are sourced, created and hosted in the United States of America.

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THIS PAGE UPLOADED: 05/04/05 REVISED: 02/14/06, 04/01/06, 04/04/07, 09/25/07, 11/07/07, 03/06/08, 12/30/08, 05/09/09, 11/14/09,12/03/10, 04/07/11, 08/18/11, 06/13/13, 08/19/18, 12/05/20