I arrived at Brize just after the 'aileron tension regualtor' saga had grounded all the VC10s in 1983. Once they'd been fixed, there was a huge backlog of transport tasks to clear, so for most of the first month or two I was woken up by the gentle purr of the mighty Vickers WhisperJet taking to the air at 0-dark-00. But only for a few minutes..... TACEVAL VC10 engine ground runs on the waterfront at night were not terribly popular with the Cartoontown inmates either! The local plod lost it once and told the Stn that if the Land Rover with loud call-out air horns (which used to drive around the married patch whenever there was an exercise called at night) ever did so again, he'd arrest the driver! But the best TACEVAL incident was when the Aux Rock Sqn spotted some TACEVAL team people forming up off base and gave chase. The Battle of Burford High Street kept OC Admin Whinge pretty busy for quite some days!
The continuous noise of ground running is a different kettle of fish. Very annoying, BUT the reason is simple. The current level of tasking and availability of assets do not grant the luxury of a 14 or 16 hour engineering day, so there will be a requirement for ground runs at night whilst the UK is still involved in operations in Afghanistan and Libya.
However, low level circuits at night and different circuit patterns as compared to the established VC10 and TriStar (and flying club!) patterns should certainly come under scrutiny. When I was teaching circuits (whether VC10 or PA28), a lot of time was spent instructing pilots about which villages etc. they had to avoid and the necessary ground features to use which achieved this.
Perhaps it's just a question of ''new boys' conforming carefully with existing requirements (e.g. straight ahead to 1000ft aal before turning downwind, with a 1500ft circuit height)? The C130s are relatively new to Brize, but some of the cowboy flying which (some) JATE and PTS crews occasionally used to indulge in, such as cranking the aircraft around shortly after take-off and thundering over Alvescot mustn't become the norm - there's no real excuse for that, no matter how much fun it might be. As for the silly sod in a WOTG C130 who barged into the circuit on an unannounced downwind join between 2 VC10s on a formation run-in and break......
But that was quite a while ago and I'm sure things are more controlled these days.