So where else will a 4 runway hub go other than Abingdon?
Don't say Heathrow, as that's "millions of people" in the way (on flightpaths)
Other airfields can be shut down easily.
Bicester isn't on the flightpath.
Aerials can be lowered or moved.
I can tell you where it won't go, and that's Upper Heyford.
Whilst I know a lot more about flying, aircraft, and airports than you do, I don't have an easy answer for where a four-runway airport will go. Heathrow is in exactly the wrong place, being west of a major conurbation with a prevailing westerly wind. It was built at a time when aircraft were small, as was London compared to today. Its location was an accident of sorts. Fairey Aviation were building aircraft at Northolt in 1928, when they were given notice to quit by the air ministry, who wanted it for themselves. Their chief test pilot had made a forced landing three years earlier, in a field by a tiny hamlet called Heathrow. He remembered how flat the land was, and Fairey bought 148 acres of farmland for the initial aerodrome, adding to it over the years. There were no runways - the tail-dragger aircraft aircraft of the day were not good in crosswinds, so simply took off into the wind, whichever direction it was coming from.
The airport was, in short, stolen by the government, under Lord Balfour during
WWII▸ under the pretext of wartime need. Had we known it then, we would have called it Thiefrow much earlier. It was never used militarily other than as a diversionary airfield. The real reason was to expand and build a civil airport Fairey was offered compensation at the value of farmland in 1939, which at ^10 an acre was pretty much what he had paid in 1928. He objected strongly. Legal proceedings continued for 20 years, before he was given ^1.6 million. The agriculture ministry complained in 1944 about the loss of good farm land. The first concrete runway was first laid out around 1945, and there's some cute film
here. In 1946, the notion of a new runway to the north of the aerodrome was put forward, leading to fury in villages that would need to be demolished (sound familiar?). Champagne corks popped in 1953, when the planned new runway was cancelled. In that year too, the biggest mistake was made, when work began on the second runway. That should have been the moment that we realised that aircraft were going to get bigger, faster, noisier, and more frequent, and built a brand new hub either north or south of London, where prevailing winds would not have meant approaches or departures over London. The French did this in Paris, and have far less trouble with noise complaints. Noise aside, imagine if that poor Concorde had taken off on runway 09 at LHR - it would have come down in the middle of Hounslow. Hindsight is, of course, the clearest of types of vision.
The rest is history. I'll correct you on a few points you made in your last post.
1) Bicester may well be on the flight path. Brize Norton's runways are 08 and 26, but Oxford is 01/19 - north to south. If you are building 4 runways, it makes sense to have at least one on a different heading, to give options when the wind isn't just westerly. In any case, the highest volume of complaints about noise at Heathrow comes not from people on the flight path, but those a short distance to the side, who can hear the noise for longer.
2) Closing airfields causes just as much emotion as opening them. The town of Carterton (or Cartoontown as my daughter, who lives there calls it) exists because of
RAF▸ Brize Norton. And look at Filton or Lyneham.
3) The height of the aerials isn't the deciding issue, it is what comes out of them. It is high energy electromagnetic radiation, of the sort likely to interfere with on-board systems and even cause health problems to people who pass by regularly - like flight crew. Look just north-west of Upper Heyford, and you will see an ordinary aerial, 637 feet above sea level, or 328 feet above the surrounding terrain. With respect to ellendunne, I think that is the TV transmitter, and I'm not going to speculate as to what the aerials may be for. May be microwave telephone or satellite link, may be a Klingon death ray, but I won't be flying over it.
My choice? Do nothing now. The newest aircraft type currently flying commercially is the Boeing 787 Dreamilner. That will fly 290 passengers from Tokyo to a gentle (and quiet) touchdown in Bristol airport. It will be joined soon by Airbus' A350 XWB, with similar qualities of range and versatility. A day may come very soon when Heathrow is used primarily for A380's and the 40-year-old 747. It would be daft to build a massive airport only to find that the airlines prefer to use newer aircraft into regional airports. Back in 2008, I flew to Los Angeles from Bristol and home from San Francisco via some windswept Dutch place that sounded like Shithole, yet was anything but. If some fool hadn't backed a catering truck into my outbound plane, it would have taken 3 hours less than fannying about through Heathrow, with no car parking to think about. It was much quicker coming home than the London option, although it seems a bit daft flying over your own house, but not seeing it again for 2 hours.
If I were in charge, I would commission a study by engineers, ecologists, environmentalists and entrepreneurs from across the political spectrum, appointing no-one over the age of 36, and no-one with any prior link to aviation. I would give them terms of reference that would say "Sort it all out, please" with knighthoods if they do and public ridicule if they don't. I would give them 2 years, during which time I would allow dual mode working at Heathrow, subject to a manifesto commitment not to extend it without cross-party agreement, and a 150 year moratorium on raising the question of a third runway should the current government decide it wasn't necessary. Should the need for huge hub airports be demonstrated, I would then consider Manston, Boris Island, a proper second runway at Gatwick, conversion of Northolt to civil use, Biggin Hill,
HS2▸ , and anything else that seemed likely to help, before standing down at the next election, accepting the peerage, writing my memoir "Why You Can't Get Anything Important Done Unless You Have A Dictatorship (pref Communist)", and decamping to somewhere nice and warm to sit out the arctic conditions likely to savage our Septic Isle soon.
