OpenAccess

Aerodata was originally the brainchild of Bernie Parsons and was formed in the early nineties. His original vision was mainly to cover all the military aircraft ever produced but this extended to cover commercial and business aviation.

Bernie, together with Val, his wife, ran the business from their home near Mildenhall in Suffolk (UK). The database was written in DOS and was the foremost aviation database during the 1990s.

Recognising that the database was becoming too large for Bernie & Val to run, Paul Turnbull became involved in the business.

Paul had finished writing his own civil aircraft database and met Bernie when looking for a military orientated product.

The two products ran separately for a while but Paul's database was a Windows based product and was found to have better print and reporting facilities than the DOS product and it was decided that future databases would be rewritten to work in Windows.

From the mid nineties Aerodata took its stand "on the road" to allow the aviation fraternity to test out the product. Click here to view

Subsequent milestones in the companies history:

2000 - Perhaps the most important year in the evolution of Aerodata. Recognising the need to move the data to a Microsoft Windows environment, an existing database group was acquired, together with most of their updater's, which was to provide the basics of what was to follow. Aerodata 2000 was launched and although originally flawed because of the joining together of three independent databases, Paul has since carried out a complete re-write of the data and structure to become again the foremost and largest aviation database in the world. Customers of the original DOS product still continue as customers today.

2001 - In January 2001 Bernie was diagnosed as having Motor Neurone Disease. Read more
This though did not deter Bernie in trying to achieve his goal of the database including all military aircraft ever built. The editing team pulled out all the stops to find and achieve ways of quickly adding such data. The frames on database totals rose rapidly from just over 500,000 to one million.

2002 - The launch of our own domain Aerodata.biz. This also enabled us to take ownership and control of our existing support email groups that had previously suffered with commercial e-groups.

2002 - Aerodata and Air-Britain agreed co-operation with a number of Air-Britain's expert contributors joining the Aerodata database updating team helping to add many extra airframes and check existing data.
At this time all Air-Britain members were offered the database at reduced rates.

2003 - In March 2003 we launched QuantumLite, a cut down version of the highly successful QuantumPlus Aviation database. Read more

2003 - In April 2003 Bernie sadly passed away. The future of Aerodata had to be assured and Paul was asked by Val to take over the business.

2005 - In May 2005 we launched Quantum Maps.

2005 - In June 2005 we populated the database with over 450,000 Mode_S codes in preparation for the launch of the SBS-1 receiver.

2005 - In September 2005 we launched QuickLookUp, originally intended to be a way of querying Mode 'S' codes directly from Quantum+ without opening the actual database. This further evolved in to a display that 'plugs' in to Kinetic's SBS-1 Mode 'S' Decoder and places a small display on the BaseStation software displaying tie ups between what is "seen" and what is recorded/logged in the database.

2006 - The release of our freeware Aerodata BaseStation.sqb file designed to replace the existing file with a new one that will display the registration and type information for over 78,000 different HexCodes. Designed to be used in conjunction with the Kinetic SBS-1.

2007 - In January 2007 we launched, our new version of the Quantum databases. These were re written in a version of Microsoft Access that would facilitate operation within Windows Vista which was launched in early 2007.
Evelyn (Paul's wife) came on-board as a full time employee to assist with the increased workload created by the many new customers we gained.
It was a steep learning curve for all concerned, but emerging from this was a product that would operate fully under any Windows system.
We had customers using older versions of Windows (98 and Millenium) that would not run if we went too far ahead with technology.
Today Aerodata remains the only aviation database that will function in ANY Windows operating system, others have tried and failed to accomplish this and have lost customers because of this.

2008 - In June 2008 we launched our new Aerodata.org domain and we moved all our email lists and websites to our own private web servers.This was to ensure we provided the most reliable communication service for all our members.
At this time we took the opportunity of refurbishing our web site, we hope you enjoy what you have now arrived at.

2010 - In October 2010 we launched our re-written databases which apart from a facelift added previous operators to the historic registrations of all aicraft on the database.

2011 - In September 2011 we incorporated Aerodata as a limited company becoming Aerodata Software Limited with Paul & Evelyn becoming the two directors.

2013 - In March 2013 Andy Walker joined us as a third director

2014 - In March 2014 Paul and Ev passed over the day to day running of the business to Andy.
Paul & Ev remain as directors of the business to give on-going support to Andy.