Audio Recordings

For a long period Farnborough supported a Scientific Division that was involved in Noise and Vibration and their effects on humans, both Aircrew and Ground Crews. Noise interferes with speech, with mental processing and, if at a high enough level, will cause hearing damage – often preventing Aircrew from flying.

As fast jets became faster in flight at low level, cockpit noise increased and interfered significantly with speech communication and operational signals. As more sophisticated equipment arrived in later aircraft (speech recognition, vocoder secure speech communications, equipment etc), research was needed in the real operational environment and small but high quality tape recorders were flown in fast jets, helicopters and transport aircraft to accurately define the environmental noise and provide solutions.

These tapes covering more than 50 years of research are held by FAST.

Enquiries & Access

If you wish to see any of our archives or artefacts, or to enquire whether we have a particular item, please see Enquiries & Access for details and forms.