Rumbula (air base)

Infobox Airport
name = Riga Rumbula
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type = Military
owner =
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city-served =
location = Riga
elevation-f = 26
elevation-m = 8
coordinates = Coord|56|53|0|N|024|13|36|E|type:airport|display=inline,title
website =
metric-elev =
metric-rwy =
r1-number =
r1-length-f = 6562
r1-length-m = 2000
r1-surface = Concrete
stat-year =
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Rumbula is an air base in Latvia located 11 km southeast of Riga city centre. The airfield has had military use in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1960s it was used as temporary passenger airport for bigger planes till the new Riga International Airport was opened in 1973. However now, Google Earth high-resolution images indicate that it is primarily the biggest auto market in Latvia, and only about five small general aviation planes are based here.At least since 2001 there has been no air base in Rumbula. Air base facilities left are the runway, which is often used to learn driving a car or for "test drives" of cars to be sold on market, as well as few "bomb-proof" military hangars. Latter are mainly used as storage or general purpose facilities and you cannot easily see them on satellite images as they were build for military purpose and camouflaged with soil, grass and trees (example is the one located at 56°53'08.39" N / 24°13'33.93" E), neither you can freely access them on-site. However, lately mainly on weekends motorized paragliders and ultra-light planes are using the runway. Airsport enthusiasts are taking control over the runway to stop car driving students from interfering with starting or landing gliders and planes.The runway is in a very bad shape and has lots of holes and concrete blocks as driving obstacles. It is difficult to find a continuous whole and obstacle free piece of the runway which is more than 300m long !The airtraffic from Rumbula can be observed mainly southbound over Rumbula and along the Daugava river in heights up to 300m (approx. 1000ft).