I have it on good authority that the Britannia low level circuit was flown at 500 ft to the south of the airfield - with no avoids.

Thanks Vc10617,

The Lss guys built the quarters on standown, blimey I wouldn't fancy living in those, they must have been assembled with such love and care lol.

I actually have a VC10& Belfast LSS cloth line badge I got off someone on eBay, (though I was only VC10 LSS A Shift), cannot be many of those survive :)

I can understand people not complaining about the Ten noise even though it was louder then the Hercs, the Ten had been around for years and was something the local population had got used to like a pair of comfortable shoes, the noise of a Herc beating its way around the circuit is different, so they will notice it.

The 2 week build (flats) was just the shell. Pukka leckies, plumbers, chippies etc would finish them off.

BBC local news Oxfordshire tonight had another item on noise - base apparently not meeting MOD guidelines at night time although it is by day. Several interviews with locals in Brize Norton village (just on the other side of the fence) complaining that aircraft noise was 'intolerable'.

With the County Council plan to build 700 new homes in the village, and the new homes planned at nearby Bampton, complaints could get substantially worse in the future.

If the plans, which are opposed by the vast majority of the locals, were scrubbed because of the proximity to the base & the noise issue would they then consider it a reasonable trade-off or would they continue to complain, essentially to have their cake & eat it?

Camoron pledges to tackle RAF’s ‘unacceptable’ noise
 

It's OK, call me 'Dave' will sort out this noise problem himself..

Cameron pledges to tackle RAF?s ?unacceptable? noise (From Witney Gazette)

And Brize will buy new windows for all if this quote is to be belived.

A base spokesman said there was no “silver bullet” solution but it will offer free triple-glazed windows if noise is not cut to a tolerable level.

And it seems such a short time ago when servicemen were dying for this country and the nation seemed to support their efforts. Living near a recently abandoned transport base, I wonder what the reaction would be if the threat of "move reversal" was proffered, the loss to the local economy. I would welcome the whole shebang near me, especially that really nice sounding Voyager jobby. I suppose "Call me Dave" couldn't face his voters if that happened.

Next we will hear is when the 700 new houses near Brize are occupied by the new "British" Roma, who will arrive and obviously demand their right to triple glazing etc. I'm sure the "Huming rights" brigade are readying their troops for the court cases.

What was the saying ? "jet noise, the sound of freedom" ?

Smudge :mad:

The presence of RAF Brize Norton is a powerful counter-argument to the building of more houses around Carterton and also to the construction of London Oxford Airport whose SIDs would effectively ground all RAF aircraft.

Should Brize close, which is presumably what the locals would wish (big increase in their house prices) then the prospect of extensive house building and an airport larger than Heathrow on their doorstep could become reality.

They might then recall the phrase 'better the devil you know'.

Surely the answer, as Brize has been an active airfield for over 60 years, is for those who now complain about the noise,to sue the estate agents/solicitors who took their money when they bought their homes in the nearby villages. Few "career" homesteaders have complained :ok::ok:

Consider yourself(s) lucky, during my one month detachment to Brize during 1977 (ish), of an evening, we would have a VC10 and G-BOAD bashing the circuit and I'm still trying to figure out which was the noisiest whilst trying to watch television of an evening.

I think that experience may be the root cause of why I took up drinking :)

And I was on detachment from a top secret Wiltshire air base where we had 60 Fat Alberts stationed, oh to get back to the peace and quiet after a month at Brize :)

Slightly off thread but similar story:-

Thorney Island in the 60' and early 70s had a very well organised 'anti' lobby in the local area with a number of retired Admirals/Generals/Air Marshals at the head. The SDO's Orders even had instructions on Operation Knitting which was what to do if the locals tried to occupy the outer guardroom at the Deeps. OCU night flying had to be done in Libya / Malta to avoid antagonising the locals. The OCU used to carry out airdrop training at Tangmere, and a retired Admiral living on a hill on the approach had a theodolite in his garden and used to measure the height of the aircraft above his house such that crews had to delay their descent to drop height until they had passed his house, as if crews under training didnt have enough to think about.

One senior officer who stood out from the rest was Lt Gen Sir Brian Horrocks, described by Eisenhower as 'The outstanding British General under Monty' and well known in the 60s for presenting a TV series of Great Battles and WW2 documentaries. He used to wander around the village in an old combat jacket with a friendly smile - a real gent and a class above the others. One day he was in the pub in Emsworth when a bevy of these retired nimbeys were complaining about the RAF. Horrocks got up saying, 'Gentlemen, at Dunkirk you were asking where was the Air Force, now that you have them I suggest you put up with them', and walked out. I remember Horrocks vividly, dont remember the others , except for the grief they gave us and the fact they used their Service contacts to undermine the current generation of servicemen. One would have hoped that such people would have known better.

Aircraft and Noise
 

As a very junior member of the Rolls Royce Hucknall Flight Test Establishments staff in the 1970's working in the Noise Department we struggled to reduce noise emissions. With the introuduction of RB 211 we made real inroads into the problem. Forty years downstream I can still recall my introductory notes.

Public reaction to 'noise' is dependent on several variables

• Frequency as in an emitted frequency
• Duration
• Pitch

In the very broadest of terms the higher frequencies, particulaly of longer durations are the more annoying.

Atmosphere does attneuate to a greater degree than you might think. Wet draggy misty conditions acting as an efficient muffler

Perhaps a humidifier & mist generator is required for the Carterton area then?

There is a definite contrast between the attitudes of the locals around Lyneham & those around Brize, the former mostly very pro the RAF & the latter very anti. Having lived with the raucous noise of the VC10 it's the change to the C130 that has presumably caused the problem although Brize has always been difficult from a noise perspective, hence why they would send their ac to Lyneham to do much of their training - I can recall VC10s flying visual ccts at a weekend there, something they would not have been permitted to do at home base, at least not for many years.

Ken, we already have a London Oxford Airport:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes: ( I think it was called Kidlington when I worked there !!!););)

LOX is the proposed new 4 runway behemoth planned in the Vale of the White Horse to the SW of Abingdon - although unlikely to be built as it's in an AIAA & would adversely affect operations at Benson & Brize - the latter because many of the SIDs would route right over the top at low altitude.

Personally I think that the daft Oxfordshire airport proposal has only been tabled so that people will stop objecting to another equally wretched proposal - for an enormous reservoir in the same area.

I'm surprised that no-one has challenged the 'Oxford AIAA' yet. There's very little flying at Brize nowadays, Abingdon no longer has any flying units, Upper Heyford has closes, Kidlington doesn't have anything like the traffic levels of 20 years ago - so why is there still a need for an AIAA?

You could ask exactly the same question about the huge areas of danger and restricted airspace which were set up when we had thousands of military aircraft

Maybe because Brize ATC has pissed off that many local GA that there is a minor but major percentage is not talking to them. There holds are outside the CAS. And they want radar separation all the time on the traffic. Because a major minority aren't talking to them there is quite a bit of unknown traffic. And also traffic which is speaking to them but is refusing co-ordination.

Although making it an AIAA isn't really going to change that. But then again its not the first time that RAF ATC have done things with no real clue about how the civilian mind set works. An AIAA really does nothing for a civilian and as it doesn't have any requirements under law they will just continue as they are currently doing.

'There' holds aren't outside of class D, the SID is. And until the class D is extended up to the airway, it will remain so.

What's wrong with radar separation on a hundred million quid aircraft? Lyneham is shut now, can't you go play over that way? What is stopping you getting Traffic Service near to the RAFs main air transport hub?

:hmm:

The top of the Brize Class D CTR is at 3500' QNH. The holds are published as 2800'-FL80. Thus anyone holding between 3501' and FL80 is indeed outside Class D airspace....

you won't get a traffic service.

And they will actively control VFR traffic in class G away from the CAS even when visual with the traffic applying radar separation which is not required in class G.

And I wasn't playing I was working and not willing to get pissed about by someone who wants to keep a 5Nm buffer outside their controlled airspace in class G of sterile airspace.

If they need the room apply for it justify it and get it.

And they could well do with loosing their attitude while speaking to civi pilots. There is no requirement for civi's to speak to them or enter into any agreements with them.

And the military AIP being behind locked payment doors doesn't help matters one little bit.