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Protecting local airfields from housing developments

Tony Lockhart said:
If you really do think that I meant that every single housing estate has all the points I made… sweet chocolate monkeys, what a place this is.

And thanks for the English lesson :/
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It really wasn't an English lesson, it was to make the point that this sounded more like something you might read in certain newspapers than an accurate-ish representation of a typical housing estate. Perhaps you were being ironic and I missed the cue.
 
tuga said:
Some types of recreation are not imposing on others and have far less impact on the planet too, like paragliding, hot-air ballooning, cycling, rowing, sailing, archery...
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Where do you think people learn to paraglide? At the gliding club, usually a small airport, with a mix of gliders and single prop planes. We don't just jump off cliffs and hope for the best.

I love mick calling owners of small planes hooray Henry's, while planning his next trip to his foreign des res...
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
A lot of these aircraft use engines designed decades ago, which were not designed to use silencers. You can’t really retrofit them, for weight, power output and aerodynamic reasons, unfortunately. Also, a lot of the noise which reaches the ground is generated by the propeller , not the exhaust. The private flying people would love quieter aircraft, they don’t want to annoy people. Modern designs are better, but still a minority of craft.

A lot of the ‘flying round in circles’ is circuit training, where the pilot practises takeoffs and landing. And a lot of the lower level flying is because the aircraft are prevented from flying higher because of controlled airspace.

The amount of aviation fuel consumed is trivial, there are much bigger targets to go at first if you want to reduce emissions. All those school run trips, for example.

And that air ambulance (or police helicopter) pilot may very well have learnt his skills at a small airfield, so let’s hope the haters never have need of one.
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I live in Oxford. Maybe that attracts the ‘flying round in circles’, I don't know. There's so much open field around, it's odd that many choose to fly around town...

From what I've read, the commercial aviation industry is one of the top polluters.
At least they don't fly around, and are a means of collective transport not a toy.

School runs are a problem. Around here the large majority of parents drives a massive SUV and leaves running with the air-con on whilst they wait, sometimes for dozens of minutes, for their children to leave school.
Unfortunately only first world countries have adequate collective/public transport networks. Those countries could easily restrict private cars (but hardly need to because people don't drive much).
 
sq225917 said:
Where do you think people learn to paraglide? At the gliding club, usually a small airport, with a mix of gliders and single prop planes. We don't just jump off cliffs and hope for the best.

I love mick calling owners of small planes hooray Henry's, while planning his next trip to his foreign des res...
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Paragliding is a mountain activity. If you live in the Netherlands or some other flat place it makes more sense to do something else.
 
TheFlash said:
It really wasn't an English lesson, it was to make the point that this sounded more like something you might read in certain newspapers than an accurate-ish representation of a typical housing estate. Perhaps you were being ironic and I missed the cue.
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Well, all of it happened on the Essex estate I lived on. And after I left, armed police carried out raids on various other houses.
Thankfully my parents and brother escaped before the drugs thing turned really nasty. The Rettendon Murders were just 3 miles away, for example.

Where I lived in Kings Lynn wasn’t too bad, but I suspect that was because it was still thirty years behind most of the country.

Darlington? I lived in a rough part, but somehow I got on with the neighbours, kept a low profile. My girlfriend, now wife, lived in the well to do area on the other side of town. :) She knew the rough pubs and bars to keep away from. She was at Sunderland poly at the time, and that town really was something else. It had just lost the last bits of the shipbuilding industry, and I had to keep my spending out of sight of the locals. My strong Essex accent was fine, a Geordie wouldn’t have been dealt with lightly.

Happy innocent days!
 
Tuga, I live in the peak district, but have spent more time paragliding the Norfolk coast than the local hills. The long sand dunes there, and in Holland make for excellent and quite demanding paragliding. I really just do it when theres not enough wind for kitesurfing.
 
sq225917 said:
Tuga, I live in the peak district, but have spent more time paragliding the Norfolk coast than the local hills. The long sand dunes there, and in Holland make for excellent and quite demanding paragliding. I really just do it when theres not enough wind for kitesurfing.
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How do you get airborne, do you jump from a plane?
 
I just lay my wing out in the wind, cross my hands, pull it into the air, and back into the lift zone on the sand dunes. On a good day you can get airborne in about 10mph on a 20 foot sand dune. It doesn't have to be 1000s of feet to be exciting, in fact theres far more finesse in low level soaring.
 
tuga said:
Some types of recreation are not imposing on others and have far less impact on the planet too, like paragliding, hot-air ballooning, cycling, rowing, sailing, archery...
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I'm not so sure about balloning, a large amount of gas burnt and recovering the balloon after landing.
As for sailing - anti-fouling paint and several other issues.
I firmly believe housing should be going high rise, not sprawling across the countryside, which lacks services and condemns you to a private car focus future
 
davidsrsb said:
I firmly believe housing should be going high rise, not sprawling across the countryside, which lacks services and condemns you to a private car focus future
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We’ve tried it. Many tower blocks still exist. Most don’t like living in them.

Perhaps if the large swathes of land owned by the old (Norman?) families could be… oh no. This is England, where we kow tow to foreign rulers.
 
Tony Lockhart said:
We’ve tried it. Many tower blocks still exist. Most don’t like living in them.

Perhaps if the large swathes of land owned by the old (Norman?) families could be… oh no. This is England, where we kow tow to foreign rulers.
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Many tower blocks are substandard social housing rubbish.
I don’t think that people in Chelsea mind living in a nice apartment.
The UK needs better dimensions and built quality standards.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
Fair point, but there are, usually, other perfectly viable alternative locations for house building. The reason they want airfields is because they are level, drained and have services already brought to the site,
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Where are these locations? Are they in places people want to live? Do they have services/access? Genuine questions - good to hear real solutions. I see a better argument for not using productive agricultural land than old airports, but happy to hear win-win alternatives. And I am not suggesting the solution to the housing shortage must be to build massive housing estates, but something needs to be built somewhere and quickly.
 
tuga said:
Many tower blocks are substandard social housing rubbish.
I don’t think that people in Chelsea mind living in a nice apartment.
The UK needs better dimensions and built quality standards.
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But while people are willing to saddle themselves with a lifetime of debt for a thinly built shoebox, won’t happen.
 
dan m said:
here are these locations? Are they in places people want to live? Do they have services/access?
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Certainly not near town centres or doctors etc
Water and sewage supply - not adequate
Road access - often very poor
Public transport - zero
 
davidsrsb said:
Certainly not near town centres or doctors etc
Water and sewage supply - not adequate
Road access - often very poor
Public transport - zero
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Much of this often describes the sort of airfield sites we're talking about too. They don't tend to build airfields close to towns, and the small, General Aviation sites are rarely well served with transport links, and more often in the middle of nowhere.

Honestly, the numbers of people affected by noise from airfields in the middle of nowhere can't be massive, surely? I live under the circuit for one such airfield, Manchester City (nee Barton) and the noise from aircraft operations rarely exceeds the noise from the main road outside my house, or the sound of my neighbours' kids playing in the garden. I happen to quite like it anyway, being a former PPL it brings me pleasure to see others enjoying the pursuit and I like watching the aircraft, but I acknowledge we're all different. But I would say that some people have a below average tolerance for activities they don't enjoy, and don't see the point in.
 
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