Virtual Tour

"To the gas turbine technology community throughout the world, Pyestock was gas turbines" - Ian Mckenzie

Welcome to Pyestock. Or rather, welcome to the Virtual Tour of Pyestock, an idealized route through the key buildings scattered around the site without all the tedious mucking around with the fence and getting covered in mud. Here, each of the key buildings are introduced, their function explained, and the inter-relations between them described. Plus, there’s no getting lost or being captured by security.

Of course, there’s hundreds of different ways to explore this huge site, so selecting one route is perhaps a little presumptuous. I could’ve just published one of my own explorations except the initial forays were random affairs as we stumbled from ‘interesting building’ to ‘interesting building’ and the later visits filled in the gaps. They weren’t the most all-encompassing of visits (although if you’re interested, all my trips are written up in the Pyestock Diaries section).

Instead, it made sense to construct a chronological virtual tour, visiting the buildings in the order of their construction. In this manner, the support buildings appear first, then the various single testing cells, and finally the huge supersonic testing chambers. Therefore the tour follows the development of the site, the phases of construction, and the ever larger buildings as Pyestock moved from component testing, through to altitude testing, and finally into the supersonic.

Therefore the tour follows the development of the site, an arc-shaped locus moving from the south through the centre of the site and round to the west.

The function of each building is briefly explained along with an exterior and interior shot. The idea is to offer a gentle overview of Pyestock, although the more adventurous can click on the “Buildings” section and dive into a more comprehensive description of each building.