The Return of Go Fly America

SkyHog

SkyHog

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Everything Offends Me
Its back!

The "Great American Fly In," or "Go Fly America Challenge" is returning after 2 and a half years of dormancy. The concept is simple: Fly to airports that others have not yet been to, take a picture of a recognizable landmark with a piece of paper showing the "password" and submit it to the website, permanently planting your flag as the official claim holder of that airport.

In the short 2 years that the challenge ran before, we received 2,295 claims, consisting of approximately 50% of the airports we had registered. This time, however, there are a few changes:

1. All public use airports in the United States are open to claim, not just those in the 48 Continental United States
2. There is no time frame or limit on our ultimate goal of claiming every airport
3. The challenge is run by a new organization, Operation: Fly

Operation: Fly is a non-profit organization dedicated to the continued life of General Aviation in the United States. Our mission is to keep the costs of operating a General Aviation aircraft low, while providing a fun, easy, and free way to get out and meet other pilots.

Its been a long 2 and a half years since we received our last claim on 12/24/2008. After all this time, we are ready to resume one of the most fun ways to burn AvGas.

The official password will be released on 7/11/2011, when the challenge officially resumes. For more information, please see http://www.operationfly.com.
 
I'm posting this separately, as it is not part of the official press release:

If you had an account before, you still have it. Please use the "Forgot Password" link to get your password reset instructions emailed to you. If you do not have access to your old email address, please email me at brennan.nick.d@gmail.com with your name, old email address and DO NOT INCLUDE YOUR PASSWORD. I will do everything I can to get you access to your account.

Neither I, nor any of our administrators have access to your password, and your password is encrypted, so it cannot be retrieved.
 
Awesome Nick!!

BTW I have permission to fly my airplane onto a military base later this month and that base is not public. Will I be able to claim it?
 
mikeinbama said:
Do student pilots qualify?

Sent from my Ally using Tapatalk
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As long as the student is the one flying the plane, they most certainly do!

ScottM said:
Awesome Nick!!

BTW I have permission to fly my airplane onto a military base later this month and that base is not public. Will I be able to claim it?
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Most likely not. What is the ICAO ID? I can check if its in the database.

Edit: Speaking of which, there are some airports that should not have preceeding "K"s that do. I'm working on reporting those to the data source. Searching with or without the K works, so it shouldn't have an impact aside from it reminding me of nails on a chalkboard when I see it (for example, K3G2)
 
BTW Nick thanks for bringing this back. I had so much fun when this was up the first time. This summer I have free time once again and this gives me something to do with my flying!!!

One suggestion for the site. If you could make it easier to find which airports need to be claimed that would be great. Something a list of the airports for each state showing their claims or lack of would be really helpful. I seem to remember the old site had something similar.
 
Nick:

I cannot describe how pleased I am that you are doing this - GoFlyAmerica was so much fun, and just as I saluted the initiative in the first place, I salute the return, and the valuable time and effort you are putting into it, now.

(Plus, I remember your original effort to claim every public-use airport in New Mexico, which was cool stuff too)
 
Woo hoo!!
So glad it's back!
And, especially happy to see that it looks as though one can report visits to airports that have already been claimed. (If not, then consider this a request!)

Back in the day, I found GFA a great tool for trustworthy and useful PIREPS... thanks Barb (OneShort)! ;-)
 
Man, browsing through the site, lotta memories (already!).

First claim ever, first day - by "Marathon Mike" Schneider, and he was a prolific claimer of fields in his Marvelous Maule - that man there loved to fly - and he has flown west.
 
The problem is...Barb already claimed everything.
 
Sweet! I can't wait to claim some more airports. Why couldn't you have relaunched this 6 months ago. I would have so many more claims in by now.
 
ScottM said:
BTW Nick thanks for bringing this back. I had so much fun when this was up the first time. This summer I have free time once again and this gives me something to do with my flying!!!

One suggestion for the site. If you could make it easier to find which airports need to be claimed that would be great. Something a list of the airports for each state showing their claims or lack of would be really helpful. I seem to remember the old site had something similar.
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You can see claimed/unclaimed airports on the map page.
 
mikeinbama, could you find that posting to add the map to a post?
 
This looks like a good reason to go fly! Looking forward to getting started!
 
Great! Thanks for bringing this back, Nick - I definitely discovered some neat places that I'd have never gone otherwise.
 
Sounds like fun.

Side-note:

Apparently the FAA thinks KAPA is in Denver. I find this a mixture of insulting and hilarious.

As a proud resident of the City of Centennial, in Arapahoe County, Colorado -- I can tell ya the only airport in Denver is Federico's little boondoggle, which is on land that the City annexed to the northeast.

It wasn't even part of Denver until the airport was built, and most of us were quite willing to cede it to Kansas. ;)

I still call City and County of Denver street potholes, Penolas. Named after Federico Pena who refused anyone be allowed to call him anything but Fred, right up until the time he ran for public office. He had a miracle return to his cultural roots that year.

Those little gems of street maintenance neglect were so bad back then that they made the news, regularly, and were brought to you by the brilliant guy who didn't want to pay snow removal crews and buy more trucks, so he recommended that trash trucks drive down residential streets to "pack down" the snow.

You can use your imagination on how that one worked out. Think sliding trash trucks taking out people's cars parked on the streets, and stuck trash trucks -- and add the freeze-thaw cycle for more mental fun.

For all his brilliance, we let Washington have him, so the rest of y'all could enjoy his genius as Transportation Secretary.

All that to say...

KAPA's leadership wouldn't give a Denver politician the time of day. ;)

Yay Centennial. Denver? Not a chance. ;) :D :nono:
 
Two more things:

1. Thank you massively to EdFred for helping me test new functionality through the development phase. He was able to give some great ideas!
2. If any of your claims are missing, let me know. A lot of identifiers changed since 2008, and unfortunately, a lot of airports were also closed since then. I tried to link them all, but I wouldn't be surprised to find that I missed some.
 
ScottM said:
One suggestion for the site. If you could make it easier to find which airports need to be claimed that would be great. Something a list of the airports for each state showing their claims or lack of would be really helpful. I seem to remember the old site had something similar.
Click to expand...

I have added something similar now. If you click on "Reports" from the home page, "Airports By State" is now an option.

I'll come up with some other useful reports too. Keep up the suggestions!
 
jason said:
You can see claimed/unclaimed airports on the map page.
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I can see a lot of pins but getting a list of the info would be far more helpful than just the pins and then having to click onto each one and then writing the information down to consider flight options.
 
Hey, any good iPhone/Android developers out there, it would be a really cool app to be able to land, and snap a pic, and upload to the site to make your claim
 
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I think I will have a birthday to celebrate the resumption of GFA. :wink2:

Will Drunken Delivery be a sponsor and will it, um, deliver?:eek:
 
Nick:

FYI, Austin Executive Airport is in your database as US-0062 ; its proper identifier is KEDC (it is very new); it is a large, well-equipped airport built where once was found Birds Nest Airport (the old identifier was 6R4 ). very recent change, so not surprising it would be a little goofy.
 
Can you submit an airport that has already been submitted? Seems like allowing people to do that would help build up a better database with more information and more pictures.
 
jesse said:
Can you submit an airport that has already been submitted? Seems like allowing people to do that would help build up a better database with more information and more pictures.
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From the website FAQ:

Can I still claim an airport if there is a pending claim?

Yes and no. You can submit a claim for any airport you have visited, even if it has already been claimed, but the first person with an approved claim essentially owns that airport. His or her name will appear as the claimer. Your name will appear as a visitor.



I registered! This sounds like fun!! :D I'll bet the webaite gets a flood of photo submissions at KOSH in three weeks! :goofy:
 
jesse said:
Can you submit an airport that has already been submitted? Seems like allowing people to do that would help build up a better database with more information and more pictures.
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Yessir! These are called "visits" instead of "claims" though, because the first person to an airport is considered to have staked his/her claim to the airport already.
 
Woo Hoo Hoo! I even remembered my password. I'm ready.

My goal--50 new-to-me airports in the next 12 months. Come here little airport! :ihih:

Thanks, Nick
 
SCCutler said:
Nick:

FYI, Austin Executive Airport is in your database as US-0062 ; its proper identifier is KEDC (it is very new); it is a large, well-equipped airport built where once was found Birds Nest Airport (the old identifier was 6R4 ). very recent change, so not surprising it would be a little goofy.
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I drove by the other day. They took me on a tour of the facility. First class operation. Media room, nice lounge, nice briefing room. They have an engine out of a Concorde on display and a 1914 Indian racer. I have a few pics I'll try to post up. Definitely recommend stopping by if you're in the area.
 
SCCutler said:
Nick:

FYI, Austin Executive Airport is in your database as US-0062 ; its proper identifier is KEDC (it is very new); it is a large, well-equipped airport built where once was found Birds Nest Airport (the old identifier was 6R4 ). very recent change, so not surprising it would be a little goofy.
Click to expand...

I manually modified this airport and submitted a request to the data source to see if they would fix it as well. There's some definite clean up that's needed in the database. As a community, if we find these, we can clean up the database for everyone.

Since I am sourcing the airport data from an open data source, any corrections we make are going to help the community world wide....how's that for contributing? :D
 
Why not just get them from the FAA directly? You can d/l the entire database as a spreadsheet.
 
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