About FAST

Safeguarding Farnborough’s Unique Aviation Heritage

FAST (Farnborough Air Sciences Trust) was founded in 1993 to safeguard Farnborough’s priceless aeronautical heritage. We work to preserve and promote Farnborough’s great heritage in aviation science – an important educational resource and an internationally significant part of the nation’s scientific progress.

FAST is a registered charity (Reg No 1040199) and a fully accredited national museum. It is entirely self-funded through the activities of its Trustees and supporting members’ association (FASTA), supplemented by donations from the general public. Additional sponsorship and grants are actively sought, alongside fund-raising events, museum hosting and shop sales.

All our activities are volunteer-led and we have been awarded the prestigious Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service.

Further information can be found in The Origins of FAST.

If you would like to join us, we would be delighted!

FAST Museum

The FAST Museum is the ‘window’ to our work and there is plenty of information about it on this website. The FAST Museum collection includes an enormous archive of equipment, machinery, photographs, films, reports and books related to this illustrious history. The FAST Archive collection amounts to approximately half a million different artefacts and obviously they cannot be displayed all at once so the museum displays are constantly being changed and updated in rotation. So even if you have visited us already please come again as the museum will have changed in some way. Increasingly this work, which is undertaken by voluntary effort, is being recognised by world-class institutions, such as The Air League, The Royal Aeronautical Society, The Science Museum and The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

The Farnborough Museum presents a selection from the FAST collection in the setting of a historic listed building. The Museum building dates from 1908 and was built as the headquarters of the Royal Engineers Balloon School. It is superbly located on a hill overlooking the runway of Fanborough Airfield – so modern planes can be seen in the air as well as historic planes on display in and around the Museum building.

The Museum is managed by the Trustees of FAST and the day to day running is in the capable hands of the volunteers of the FAST Association who undertake the archiving, restoration, maintenance and display activities, as well as maintaining off-site storage facilities and providing guides and a lecture service.

In the Museum you can see photographs and exhibits from the early years of aviation and important pieces of aviation history, like Sir Frank Whittle’s earliest jet engines, a full size replica of the Cody Flyer and research models of Concorde. You can watch demonstrations of a working wind tunnel, take part in a flight simulation and much, much more!