Quote:
Originally Posted by Heightswitch
Donington is the best one!! Pushing cars whilst being overflown by large passenger jets at full throttle taking off!! 
N. |
It does seem crazy doesn't it. But then the jets are gone in a few seconds and some of the places often affected by track noise, depending on which way the wind is blowing, are not under the flight path anyway.
Most of the aircraft using EMA these days are pretty quiet compared to how they used to be.
The light aircraft are more intrusive being lower, and noisier and slower so they hang around longer.
There's one glorious WW1 era biplane that flies around once in a while that is incredibly noisy and only manages about 50knots. (Or so it seems). Into a half decent headwind it sits around up there for hours going nowhere on full throttle.
Race days are not so bad - the noise is about 20 minutes on and 20 minutes off for a clubbie.
Track days, depending on atmospheric conditions and wind direction (and what's out on the day), can be inaudible, almost inaudible except for some tyre squeal, somewhat intrusive but broken up by a lot of red flags for recovery or a near perpetual background noise with the only respite being the lunch break. In the longer days of summer there are often evening sessions tacked on to extend the day.
By comparison one hardly notices the planes much of the time and, of course, the direction of use of the runway varies regularly so the aircraft noise patterns differ quite a lot and are shared with people the other side of the M1 who probably rarely hear any track noise at all.
The problem is that it only takes one regular complainant to screw things up - and you can always find one.
Some years ago the Airport reported that noise complaint had dramatically reduced in the previous year. I don't remember the exact figures but they were something like 13,000 calls per annum down to 4,000.
The difference was basically down to fewer call from one telephone number - which happened to be the number of a former and recently retired Air Traffic Controller at the airport.
I think the figures showed that something like 99% of calls were made by a very small number of people. It will no doubt be a similar situation for Donington to deal with via the Council noise control people.
Presumably there are a lot of happy faces during the FormulaE test days ...