R52 Wind Tunnel Building. Farnborough

Dating from 1907 this is the oldest wind tunnel building on the former RAE site and originally housed two ‘wind channels’ as the earliest designs were known. The building contains the wooden 4’x 3’ ‘Low Turbulence Wind Tunnel; constructed in 1946 entirely from ‘Douglas Fir’ and designed to deliver extremely high quality air flow. Among many other things, the tunnel was used to test early delta wing designs during the development of high speed flight. The building was also used as the ‘expert evaluation location’ when the Antiques Roadshow paid a visit to Farnborough.

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