Essendon have appropriately launched the fundraising drive for their new AFL facility in front of a plane once called a "biscuit bomber".

At $30 million, the Bombers' training and administration base alongside Melbourne Airport will be big bickies indeed.

Essendon hope they will go from having the worst facilities in the league to the best when their new home is operational in two years.

Assistant coach Mark Thompson, who is having a big input into the design of the football facilities, calls it a one-off chance to give the team the best of everything.

"It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us to build something that's going to look after our future for the next 20 years," Thompson said.

"We don't want to be redoing this in eight years' time."

Essendon's fundraising drive was launched on Wednesday in a Melbourne airport hangar, in front of a World War Two-era DC3 aircraft.

They aim to raise $5 million from members and fans.

The Bombers are already confident they have raised half the $30 million budget from the federal government and other sources.

They hope to build the new facility without taking on any debt.

Essendon decided to move the football and administration departments away from their long-time Windy Hill home after they could not gain approval for a major upgrade of the ground.

The tipping point was a dispute with the local bowls club that could not be resolved.

Now they plan to build two ovals - one the exact size of the MCG playing surface and the other that matches the Etihad Stadium dimensions.

"We need a good deck - we need a lot of grass, not just the one oval," Thompson said.

"We have a small oval at Windy Hill. We need a lot more grass than what we have, and the high-quality grass as well, that looks after their bodies."

Thompson looked around the cavernous aircraft hangar that hosted the fundraising launch and said they also planned to have an indoor training area that would be slightly bigger.

"We're going to have a gymnasium that we can grow into, and whatever sports advances that come in the future, we're going to have room to put anything we want in there," he said.

"Maybe altitude stuff, or hyperbaric chambers or any radiology (equipment) we might do in-house - whatever the growth is in sports science and technology, we want the room to be able to do it."

Club chairman David Evans said there had been no backlash from fans about leaving Windy Hill.

He was also confident of raising enough funds, despite the state of the world economy.

"They want their club to be 'best of breed' and certainly weren't embarrassed by the fact that we need this money," Evans said.

"They're happy for us to ask."

Evans said the goal was for the players to be training on the new ovals by Melbourne Cup week next year and for the facility to be built by late 2013.

He added the club would keep some sort of presence at Windy Hill.

A condition of the federal funding is that Essendon will share the facility with the Australian Paralympic Committee.

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