Farnborough Air Sciences Trust Museum Review
We love educational days out and museums and have started to tick off a few local, lesser known museums that we hadn’t been to before. The Farnborough Air Sciences Trust Museum is one of those museums – and a lovely way to pass a couple of hours on a weekend.
What is the Farnborough Air Sciences Trust Museum?
The Farnborough Air Sciences Museum, also known as the FAST Museum, is home to a fascinating collection of aircraft, equipment, machinery, photographs, films, reports and books related to Farnborough’s aviation history.
Visiting Farnborough Air Sciences Trust Museum
When you visit the museum you can park in their free car park on site, which gives fantastic views of Farnborough International Airport, a perfect place for plane spotting!
Alternatively, there are plenty of side roads to park on or you can use public transport – or walk if you’re local. The museum is just along from the Aviator Hotel, a well known landmark and popular venue locally.
The FAST Museum is open to the public on Saturdays, Sundays and Bank Holiday Mondays plus they have availability for school trips and adult tour groups on Tuesdays and Thursdays which may incur an additional cost.
The museum is free to enter but donations are welcome. The museum is a charity, run completely by volunteers and they depend on fundraising to cover their operating costs and keep the museum updated.
What to see at the museum
When you arrive at the FAST Museum you head straight to reception to check in and are then free to wander around the exhibits. The visit starts in the Grade 2 listed Trenchard Building where there are two display halls to look around.
Display Hall 1 is the main hall which includes Frank Whittle’s 1943 Whittle W2/700 Jet engine and the Metropolitan-Vickers F.2 engine, which was tested on the Gloster Meteor.
There’s a black box flight recorder, an ejection seat and a huge collection of model aircraft that tracks aircraft development through the 20th century.
You then walk through to Display Hall 2, located in the original 1908/9 Balloon School storage area, where you can learn more about Wind Tunnel Technology, Space, Jet Engines, Sonobuoys, Target Drones, Flight Simulation and more.
There’s a cut-away Rolls Royce Conway jet engine that shows clearly how it works, a Shorts SD3 Stiletto supersonic target drone and the Chevaline Penetration Aid for the Polaris Missile System.
You’ll also see a working example of a Gottingen wind tunnel recovered from Germany after the war and get to try several different Aircraft Flight Simulators where you can test your piloting skills! The children absolutely loved these.
In the Cody Pavilion, a seperate building outside, you will find a full size replica of the Samuel Cody’s Flyer, the first aeroplane to make a powered, controlled and sustained flight in Great Britain, which took place in Farnborough in 1908.
The pavilion is also home to temporary exhibits so it’s worth checking the museum website regularly to see what is currently on display – and making return visits when something new catches your eye!
Outside of the main museum buildings, around the museum grounds, there are so many aircraft on display along with parts of aircraft, nose sections and cockpits that are of historical and scientific interest.
You’ll see the Lightning, the first and only interceptor/fighter designed and built in Britain capable of achieving supersonic speeds in level flight, the Jindivik target drone and so many Hawker aircraft.
There’s also Lynx and Puma helicopters, parts of Concorde aircraft, Boeing winglets, nuclear weapons and more. There’s just so much to see and you can spend as long or short a time as you like discovering it all.
All of the exhibits have information boards next to them so you can learn more about each of them as well as the wider aviation industry in the process.
Volunteers at the FAST Museum
Throughout the museum there are enthusiastic expert volunteers on hand to answer your questions, tell you more about the exhibits, help with the simulators and get the children engaged. They’re a real credit to the museum.
Food and drink at the FAST Museum
The Farnborough Air Sciences Trust Museum has a coffee lounge upstairs in the main museum building which is open during the museum opening hours. It serves hot and cold drinks, cakes and biscuits.
We had such a nice time at the FAST Museum and know that we’ll be back again in the future. The children loved seeing all the aircraft on display, having a go on the simulators and seeing planes take off at Farnborough Airport too!
You can find out more about the FAST Museum over on their website and for reference their address is: FAST Museum, Trenchard House, 85 Farnborough Road, Farnborough, Hampshire GU14 6TF
