Lee on Solent, beginning of the end

[FBS]

It looks like the beginning of the end for Lee on Solent. There has been a report that everything outside he infamous blue fence is up for development.
This is no surprise as development of the airfield has been on the cards for years.

However, developing the area around an airfield is going to place it under great pressure (I bet no one thought of that) and will make basing any other aircraft there next to impossible (I bet no one thought of that) and the operators of the airfield will not be able to maintain it economically with just the coastguard and police there (I bet no one thought of that) and so before too long the whole place will get sold off for development (I bet no one thought of that) and not only will the south lose another potentially very useful and well located airfield but the local roads will become even more clogged up with idiots in BMW X5s.

This saves Fareham council from having to invent any more stories of developing it as a regional airport (as reported in the Portsmouth Evening News last year or so) which some saw as a callous way of getting an 'anti airfield' group up and running so they could develop the site as housing as they have wanted to do all along.

Now they have taken out the pipe bombs (investigated some years back and considered 'safe' at the time) it makes building on the site even easier.

It is a matter of time before that one goes. I give it three to five years before it is history.

If you are based there I would suggest getting a move on to get your aeroplane through the fence and off to somewhere a little more aviation friendly.

[david viewing]

Is it available to visiting aircraft at the moment?

[TheOddOne]

I tried unsuccessfully last year. I'd be pleased to hear different, so I can go and see my sister in Gosport (dreadful journey by car!)

Cheers,
TheOddOne

[S-Works]

Who cares? Insular bunch. It is not a GA airfield it is a private owners and government airfield that does not welcome or support GA outside those based there or the odd maintanance visitor.
If it was more welcoming it would be missed. Brought about it's own demise.

[Nipper2]

I'm afraid I have to agree with bose-x. I live just down the road but would not base my aircraft there if they paid me. The guys that run it (coppers) are the most arogant buch of ****** (insert your own expletive) you will ever meet. You would not want to go within a mile of the place.

The police especialy will be delighted when all those nasty little private aircraft finally go away and leave them to run their airfield in splendid isolation.

I doubt it will actually close, but I'm fairly sure it will become a fully private field.

And who pays for all this.......? You and me of course. It's a disgrace.

[IO540]

A great candidate for an airpark.

All it needs is a GPS approach with a 300ft MDH - US-style. By the time that happens (no ATC, etc) UK GA will be on its last legs anyway.

It's a shame though. There are very few airfields on the s. coast and the extreme difficulty of driving along the coast (the A27 is a truly awful road, through Worthing and Arundel) means that one needs more airfields in order to derive utility value from GA flying. Make no mistake about it - the heath of US GA doesn't come from $150 burger runs.

[GOLF_BRAVO_ZULU]

Some nice Appropriations in Aid for Uncle Gordon. That slipway has so much potential beyond more sodding houses.

[shortstripper]

One nice point about it being there is that it's an ideal emergency landing strip. It's there or I.O.W when flying across the Solent avoiding Southampton airspace to the South.

SS

[paulc]

Agree with bose-x and Nipper - very unwelcoming to all. I was a regular visitor there while working on a couple of old aircraft and the lack of co-operation was very obvious. The recent blue fence does not help with at least 7 aircraft hitting it. We had to move one of the larger aircraft from its parking position before the fence was completed otherwise it would have been stuck there.

The police only want the airfield for their expensive turbine islander and nothing else.

[Nipper2]

It's also worth pointing out that the guys from SEEDA (South East England Development Agency) are another load of ****** (insert your own expletive). These are the people in charge of developing the site.

They are universally hated and despised in the commercial property development business. The general view is that if they were any good at what they did, they would be in business for themselves not sitting around supping it up at the tax-payers expense. They contribute absolutely nothing that the commercial sector could not do without them. And they're clueless to boot.

The whole thing stinks.

And, shortstripper, don't bank on it. A friend of mine had cause to land at Lee on Solent without permission and the pointy-heads swarmed round to shoo him away much as you would if an uninvited car appeared on your front lawn.

[lostinBRU]

The big structure going up on the airfield at the moment is?

Cheers

P.S. I was a UAS QFI there in the early nineties when it was still an active Navy field. We shared the same building as the Police and by and large they were all nice guys to know. Of course they were there to fly and not involved in the politics of the place. Much has obviously changed.

Only one pilot (the boss) was a serving copper and I'm sure even that was civilianised not long after. We had a giggle when the serving boss wrote the job spec for his civilian successor............. cos guess who's c.v. fitted the spec to the letter!;)

[FBS]

It is a new heli pad for the Coastguard.

Here is my latest guess (and it is just a guess)

New coastguarg heli centre opens. Owners scare away all but the police by building on them.

Police use one Islander.

One Islander does not justify the expense of one runway.

Therefore the Islander gets retired.

And the Police buy a Helicopter (name another police force that uses fixed wing, there may be one or two but therea re not many)

Hey presto, one airfield up for development and it has had the bombs removed.

Fareham and Gosport get building land they 'need' and someone makes a bunch of money.

I give it five years.

[proplover]

I'll name one! Chester Police, aircraft based at Hawarden.

Must agree though, most councils are very quickly dazzelled by the thought of £££££££££'s (with a few councils actually, would you believe it having developers as members - strange that) and most dont give a dam about old airfields etc etc

[FBS]

Having sat through planning meetings where a member of the committee has said "Oh I don't understand plans" and one where the head of town planning has openly lied about a conversation I had with him and seen just how apparently bent they can be nothing surprises me.

A couple of years ago there was a piece in the Portsmouth Evening News about how Fareham wanted to develop Lee as a regional airport. This, in my view, was nothing more than an attempt to polarise public opinon against the airfield.

As it is the area is unable to support the development as the infrastructure does not exist. You only have to try to drive in the area, at rush hour it approaches gridlock.

Lee could be a truly great GA airfield with clear approaches on both sides. What is happening to it is almost criminal. What is that fence all about? The Navy had it fenced for years, why another inside the airfield?

And Chester's fixed wing aeroplane, have they started selling off Hawarden bit by bit yet? Seen any blue fences? It might just be a matter of time.

Just like Lee.

Five years.

Order your house now, you might get discount!

[Dave Gittins]

Having flown from Lee just the once, with Carill Aviation but wishing to continue to do so ... are there not positive steps that can be taken to preserve the field and put it back into GA use ?

As I saw in a post by Mike Cross this week, the area used to have loads of airfields and soon will have nothing but 2 large commercial operations and Goodwood.

Instead of just being a bunch of moaning minnies is there any positive action we can take ????

DGG :ugh:

[FBS]

In the flurry of smiles that announced the dour Scot was going to be friends with all of us if/when he is PM, it was annouced that HMS Daedalus is to be one of the new Eco-towns built over whatever open land is left in Southern England.

This does not come as a surprise at all, read the previous posts, as the local council has been desperate to build on this for ages it is exactly that they wanted. The "we want to develop this as a regional airport" was the most callous attempt at massaging public opinon that I have ever seen.

A questionnaire has gone out to local residents and it makes interesting, frustrating and annoying reading. It is written with that "Do you still beat your wife?" presumptive edge. All of the questions relate to the increase in local services that could happen if the place was built over, there is no option, as far as I could see, for anyone to say "Actually I would rather it was not built on because the local infrastructure and road system cannot deal with the increase in people and we would prefer it to remain as it is". It is a fait accompli.

Please no one come on here and say "it is no great loss, it is unfriendly" as I have seen elsewhere. Lee is on the way out, Dunsfold has a very limited time and what else do we have in the south that can take any development as an airfield? It is a great shame this has been allowed to happen and the council and landowners have been able to destroy what is an ideal GA airfield in an area where development is going to adversely affect the lives of people nearby. Getting into and out of Gosport and Lee on Solent is bad enough now without Brown's Eco-monstrosity on the site. Even gravel extraction would have been preferable.

I gave it five years in an earlier post. I now give it two.

If you are in business selling Helicopters to police forces you might want to contact Hampshire. I am sure they are in the market.

[shortstripper]

ANY airfield lost to housing is a another nail in our collective coffin as it helps set a precedence :(

I've been to Lee on Solent a couple of times and liked it. It's also a great "get out of jail card" if the engine were to fail or falter on the popular Stoney Cross - Cowes/Solent route around airspace. :sad:

Not looking forward to PM Brown's reign :yuk:

SS

[Mike Cross]

As FBS says, the local infrastructure and road system cannot cope. But then again that will be the same reason (together with its proximity to Southampton) that it won't be viable as an airfield either.

Any facility has a catchment area. If you were to draw a line delineating an area that was within a 30 minute drive of Daedalus you wouldn't have much. It has the Solent to the South, Portsmouth Harbour to the East, and the Hamble River to the West, with the first available crossing at Bursledon. To the North half an hour won't get you far past Fareham on the current roads.
We do need to get awayfrom the idea that an ex-mil airfield accupying 350 acres of real estate makes an ideal GA airfield, it doesn't for a couple of reasons:-

1. It can be converted to a regional airport for CAT and GA will get kicked out, as at Southampton.

2. If kept as a GA airport it will never earn enough income to justify its existence. It's a sad fact that 350 acres of real estate in a location like that is worth a lot of money.

Gosport has no decent routes in or out and the development of this site and the other military sites such as Hasler will fund the infrastructure improvements. I'm not saying I support it, just that it's a fact of life.

Development of Daedalus will be yet more infill into Solent City that is gradually filling up the area between Portsmouth and Southampton.

If you were going to build a GA airfield today the ideal location would be out in the country, near to a main road with few neighbours and a couple of 850 metre runways with the airfield infrastructure in the angle between them, not the MoD standard 3 runway layout with a perimeter track round the outside and the building infrastructure outside it. All we need is a philanthropist with a love of flying and the will to make it work.

[FBS]

But that is highly unlikely to happen and so we have to make the best of what we have, which is fast becoming nothing. As you say it was never going to be a commercial airport, the only reason that story came through the paper was to get people against it to justify Fareham Council's already decided scheme to redevelop. It was a foregone conclusion and everything they have done has been done in a way to minimise any change of anything else.

The money raised from the sale of Haslar will not find its way into infrastructure. Even if it did there are very, very few places where any improvement to the road system can be made. Their best bet would be to reinstate the old railway as a rapid transport system but the people that decide these things are the same bunch of 'professionals' who had the spinnaker tower built from dodgy concrete (don't stand underneath it folks!). It just ain't going to happen.

I agree a standard military three runway airfield is not going to make money as a GA field but there are plenty of working airfields that are built on a base that is just that, they just don't use all of it.

It is sad that an airfield is on its way out. It is the airfield I grew up next to and so I have a soft spot for it, but covering it in housing is going to be nasty and the way they are doing it leaves a nasty taste.

There is something about the whole thing that just stinks.

[Mike Cross]

The Gosport Rapid Transit scheme shut down a year or two ago. The aim was to build a tunnel under the harbour mouth to llink Portsmouth Gosport and Fareham. I imagine they spent a lot of money proving it wasn't financially viable. Marseille has a very viable road tunnel under the harbour mouth but that's the Vieux Port, which doesn't take anything as big as what goes into Portsmouth.
Sadly people don't appreciate the open space and wildlife habitat that an airfield provides. I flew into Portsmouth on the last day and you'd be hard pressed to find any open bit of grass bigger than a back garden on the entire site now.
Hamble, Lee on Solent, Gosport, Thorney Island, Tangmere, Ford :{

[kevmusic]

Some ten or so years back, when I was a (non-flying) member of the PFA, Barry Smith (think that's right) was very vocal on the subject of airfield threats, in the house magazine. So were David Ogilvy and AOPA. Bodies like these carry some (not a lot :rolleyes:) of clout. Have they been alerted to Lee?

[Dysonsphere]

Whats the chances of Thorney Island being opened for anything bigger than microlights, nice big runways and approachs over water would be ideal.