No other single location in the world has contributed so much to progressing aeronautical science over more than a century as the former Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough. Since 1993, the Farnborough Air Sciences Trust, a registered charity and an Arts Council Accredited Museum, has campaigned as an all-volunteer organisation, to safeguard and celebrate the site’s unique aviation legacy that stretches from the earliest Army ballooning activity, and Cody’s first successful aeroplane flight in the country, to the headquarters (now the museum) of the Royal Flying Corps and its first squadrons, through both World Wars and into the research, development and testing of jets and supersonic aircraft, missiles and space vehicles, up to the digital era. The FAST Museum tells this story and its collections and archive include hundreds of thousands of historical photographs, films, records, reports and artefacts, including hundreds of unique examples of pioneering prototype equipment, devices and systems, with a vast computer-based database used by students, film-makers, researchers and others on a global basis. The FAST collection also includes hundreds of wind tunnel models and many full-size military aircraft and helicopters formerly based at the RAE and familiar in Farnborough skies. The museum also has an extensive library, shop and five working flight simulators. Its prize exhibit is a full size highly authentic replica of S. F. Cody’s British Army Aeroplane No 1A in the condition it first flew in 1908, just yards from the FAST museum site. This was built by FAST volunteers in 2008 to celebrate the Centenary of British powered flight and is displayed in a specially built pavilion that now also houses many other exhibits as well as the Cody story.…Read more
Address: Trenchard House, 85 Farnborough Road, Farnborough, Hampshire, GU14 6TL
Phone: 01252 375050 (Tuesdays, Thursdays, Sat and Sun only)
Email: manager@airsciences.org.uk
www.airsciences.org.uk