Dunsfold Aerodrome in Surrey will be familiar to TV viewers around the world as the ' Top Gear ' test track and studio, it was (is ?) also the location of Paul Stoddard's ( Minardi ) aircraft components operation.

A wartime fighter base for Spitfires & Hurrricanes, as well as bombers, post war Hawker and British Aerospace and the first tethered flight of the Harrier took place there.. indeed much regarded as secret work happened.

There are plans now to build a whole new town of 2600 new houses over the site and everything would be lost.

http://dunsfoldparknewtown.com/index.php?I...ntent&task=view

All over Britain it seems ,airfields ,quite wrongly in my view are designated 'brown field sites ' and are getting the go ahead for the most massive housing estates. In reality these are open spaces in remote and beautiful English countryside.

Whilst maybe not formal permanent venues these airfields have and are highly valuable motor sport testing and competition areas and their loss is yet another nail in the coffin of motor racing in Britain and yet more urbanisation in a heavily overcrowded country and the desecration of our formally green and pleasant land.

I would urge everyone to join this campaign to oppose this development.

Aerial view of the 2 mile long test track very long runway and aerodrome this is a 600 acre site in use constantly for film television advertising and events apart from commercial aircraft related industry

http://tviv.org/Top_Gear/Test_Track



Film of the Caparo going around the test track

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCxdzP76ILg



Aerodrome History

http://dunsfoldparknewtown.com/index.php?o...id=64&Itemid=29

The only point I would make is that we should give priority in complaints to threatened venues that are currently active for motorsport. Curborough is the most topical. Sadly Dunsfold (which the club world had in mind for a possible sprint course from the time it was first known that BAe were pulling out) was effectively ruined as far as hopes for the sport were concerned because of the activities of Top Gear and others, including Surrey Police "training", having already upset the locals.

That makes me very sad indeed. I was christened in Dunsfold church and we lived in a Nizzen hut on the airfield for a few years. My father worked in the "Experimental" hanger at Dunsfold and pulled the chocks away when the Harrier made it's maiden flight. Hanging in my office I have a large photo of a fully laden Hawker Hunter with the signatures of all the Hawker test pilots dedicated to me at the age of eleven.

As Richard says, this is beautiful English countryside-the kind of thing Turner painted-the thought of 2600 houses going in there is tragic.

2600 new houses, with the market about to tank like a burning Panzer? I think Dunsfold will be OK for a while yet...

Unfortunately, this sort of thing is happening all over the world Mankind is a virus!!

On a purely selfish note, is there presently public access to the precinct? I might like to visit before it is all plowed under

Mick, if nothing else go to the village of Dunsfold-it is a very pretty archetypal English village along a beautiful village green--the church according to legend, was supposed to be built beside the green but the building materials kept getting mysteriously transported to another site so the church was built there! This in the thirteenth century--William Morris described it as the most beautiful church in all of England. Have a pint or two at the "Hawk and Harrier" while you are there for me.

We can always rely on Pete for a great turn of phrase !!

.........I do hope you turn out to be right.

If anyone is going there, do please take some photos and post them up.

So many wartime airfields are being destroyed, there seems to be no desire to preserve any of this heritage or history either.

If you go to the CPRE website above you can sign up or better still write a letter of objection to the planners.

So many lovely parts of England are going down under a sea of densely packed chipboard modern cramped boxes on soul less unattractive housing estates,, putting pressure on roads and resources already at breaking point

Government produced statistics put UK population at 61 Million up by 10 % in 30 years however the voluntary nature of the census carried out only every 10 years on the 01 years many believe this vastly understates the true figures and misses much of the illegal immigration. Other studies of comparitive consumption of food/water/energy/ consumer goods etc over a long period suggest the true population figure may be a further 15 % higher than stated. No wonder there is such pressure on housing and prices.

And Curborough sprint and test track
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/202...to-be-seen.html
O/T . and Joy Rainey's test of a Pilbeam there in 2001.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/main.j...27/emfjoy28.xml
Roger Lund

I always wondered what the purpose was of the tandem engines on the 747 at Dunsfold (as regularly viewed in Top Gear). I thought it must have been some sort of experimental test plane. Turns out it was all done for the James Bond movie, Casino Royale. How disappointing!

http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/planes/q0297.shtml

When I read this I wondered about tandem engines, but they are of course side by side, not tandem. But that that's how they are described in the linked page. As it says, paired engines were pretty common on early US-built jet aeroplanes (B47, B52 and even as add-ons on the B36) mainly because they were pretty feeble and to get enough thrust you needed a lot of them.
But never in tandem.
This is more of a tandem engine


(Fiat AS-6 24-cylinder engine)

Allan, your engine reminds me of the chap some years ago, early 1990s possibly, who built a replica 2900B Alfa, and, in order to have a straight 8 engine used two four cylinder motors mounted nose to tail on a special crank, IIRC. There was a detailed piece in one of the magazines about it. I believe it was auctioned a few years back
Roger Lund.

I suppose it is heartening that the National Museum of Scotland (and concorde) as well as the other owners are firmly ensconsed at East Forune which makes it unilkely that the site will be given over to housing even given the huge property value in east Lothian these days

Unfortunately, it also means racing will be limited to the bikes at the western section of the circuit.

But if you google earth the site you can see that it'd make a nice circuit!

But those Alfa straight eights had the timing gears, supercharger drive, etc. in the middle so were more or less like that in the first place.

The AS-6 engines were mechanically independent, each driving one element of a pair of contra-rotating propellors. The cunning bit was that as the amount of power that can be absorbed by the two props. in such a pair is not equal, the rear engine, which drove the front propellor, also drove the supercharger for both.