Historical Information

Hilversum has been around for a good number of decades, since 1939.  In 1964, someone made a brief (and presumably silent) black & white film (no narration) about the airport.  It has got a nice jazz music track added to it now, so you can take a moment to see what the whole business looked like more than half a century ago.

In 1934 local residents wanted to build an all-encompassing sports facility with a cycling track, a motocross track, a soccer field, water polo facilities, a couple of cafes, and several clubhouse facilities for the different groups.  More importantly, they want to build an aerodrome.

They tried to persuade the municipality to participate in this as a business partner but were turned down.  They approached several landowners to secure the area for the airport it was always too short, or too narrow.

After leasing 45 hectares from the Dutch Reformed Church, they approached the government and proposed that the preparation of the field could be treated as a work project for the unemployed.  After much negotiation this was approved.

It faced further roadblocks from various organisations trying to profit by it, but eventually the work was completed.

Later, local builders tried to get permission to raze the airport so they could build houses, but they were thwarted in their attempt.  The airport continues to operate to this day for general aviation and helicopter service.

Looking Around

If you want to watch events around the airport, including 4 runways, you can watch their live webcam at any time.  Beneath the camera are ten clickable links that will swing the camera around to a pre-chosen selection, and it will then zoom and auto-focus for the best image.

In this particular video, we have a young pilot out on his second solo flight, which includes take-off, one circuit of upwind, crosswind, downwind, final approach, and concluded with a touch-and-go landing where you get all your wheels on the ground, line up for a complete landing, but then hit the throttle again, take off, and do another circuit.  It’s the best way to learn how to land, by doing it over and over again.

To add that extra layer of reality, don’t forget to check out the Flight Radar.  If you’re a fan of Air Traffic Control you can watch the skies around Hilversum Airfield here.  Clicking on any plane will identify it for you, where green is outbound, blue is inbound, and gray is just passing through the airspace.

Incidents

None—no entries in the Aviation Safety Network Database.

The Takeaway

If you want to learn to fly, this is a good spot.  If for some strange reason you wish to get out of a perfectly good airplane and make your way back to Earth with a big square of partially steerable fabric being the only thing keeping you from heading back down like a homesick anvil, you can learn to parachute here, too.  Different strokes for different folks!