I'm another who started his career there, in my case as an 18 year old Student Apprentice at the SETC in what had previously been ETPS' buildings. After leaving there, at various times I worked in Aircraft Dept, Base Engineering, Engineering Services (and Aero at Bedford).
The state of the place now is appauling, and I'm not too distressed to be working elsewhere these days - but in it's heyday (although a relative youngster, I was there at the end of that happy period of blue-skies research and constant experimental flying) it was fantastically exciting, and created several generations of Britain's best aeronautical Engineers (although Genghis Sr. who was a rough contemporary of JF but at Supermarine would probably dispute that;-) ).
Having said that, when I was there much of RAE was like a shanty town - presumably it's years of lack of investment of in the buildings and facilities, not the 1990-1995 creation of DRA by Chisholm that did the real damage.
Like Bexil I used to lurk when I had a couple of hours spare in the historical section of the library - what happened to that fantastic collection of old manuals, textbooks and airfield logs? For that matter, what happened to the rest of that amazing library? - I heard an awful rumour a while ago that DERA/Qinetiq had simply disposed of a lot of the older journal collections, which if-true is criminal.
It was always inevitable that RAE would have to change, but complete withdrawl from the main site, closing down all flying, and scrapping much of the library I can't ever forgive as a way of bringing the site into the 21st century.
On the odd occasions I have meetings with anybody from Qinetiq, I make a point of wearing my old RAE tie, just in case it causes offence to any of the management!
G