Visiting Mascot on Oct 14

[Werner K]

Hi all,

I've just joined the message board in the hope of obtaining some up to date information about the plane spotting sites around Mascot.

My partner & I will be at Mascot on Fri Oct 14 for the purposes of plane spotting. We will be traveling by car. We won't have a ladder (bit of a pain for the rest of our trip).

I'm after some up to date information to help make the most of our plane spotting day.

Some background information : we're from Adelaide so, we only have a few international movements per day, the number depending on what day it is.

My partner is passionate about 747's while my main interest would be the MD-11F's, never having seen one. Also any wide bodies in general are of interest as well, particularly from airlines which don't serve Adelaide or Melbourne (we recently spent a full day plane spotting at Tullamarine).

Are there any days in particular where the abovementioned planes (747/MD-11F) are more likely to be in Sydney? Is any particular time of day better than another for "heavy" arrivals/departures e.g. morning vs afternoon?

During October, are the prevailing winds more of a northerly or southerly direction or can they be from any direction? Is there any bias towards which runway is most often in use for international arrivals/departures in the morning/afternoon?

After reading the Wiki Mascot spotting guide, I was thinking of visiting the Shep's Tower site in the morning and the Beach site in the afternoon. If there is a southerly blowing, it would be tempting to visit the Qantas Drive site which I would think would be good either morning or afternoon?

We would be interested photographing/videoing aircraft as well. Camera setups are Canon 700d + 18-55mm & 75-250mm and Canon 70d + 18-250mm. We also have a video camera with a reasonable zoom on it.

Are there any fences/obstructions at the Shep's Mound site wrt photography? Qantas Drive should be ok to get airborne photos while for the Beach site you would be restricted to the old Tower carpark (reading some of the info on this site) to get fence-free photos.

If 34L is in use for departures, is there any location where you would be able to clearly hear the engines spooling up (for the purposes of videoing)?

Any other suggestions?

Finally, is anyone likely to be out spotting on a Friday and who would be interested in helping us get the most of our spotting? Local knowledge is always valuable!

Apologies for the long posting.

Cheers,

Werner

[Paul L]

For locations and info:
http://planespottingsydney.wixsite.com/planespottingsydney
Eastern side of airport in the mornings, western in the afternoon. Obviously.
Where you go really depends on type of shots you are looking for.
I don't usually spot on a Friday otherwise I'd take you around.
There are several spotters who live local to airport who may be able to help you out.

[Kent Broadhead]

A little surprised at the lack of responses Werner. I hope you have a good trip!

Qantas Drive has become a little more awkward since the new bridge and related works. Yes it can be made to work AM or PM, but the high fence makes threshold shots impossible (not sure if anyone has tried the actual bridge, which would have been perfect for spotters, but we're talking about SACL of course). The pathway is a shared footpath/cycleway so be careful of cyclists - it is quite a major route. ou may be best parking at Tempe Reserve and walking around.

34L departures - yes you can hear engines spooling from the tower car park, but they are distant.

[Rowan McKeever]

I'm not a Sydney local so can't help you with things like locations, winds etc but as far as your questions on schedules etc:

* mornings and around 3-5pm or thereabouts are good times for widebodies as you get the BIG early morning wave of international arrivals (usually even NZ has a widebody in the mornings, I think), then you get many of the US/Canada and some of the Asia departures heading out late morning and early afternoon, before the Middle East and Europe departures in late afternoon.
* B747s are in every day, albeit fewer and fewer as time goes on - QF obviously has the most (and Tuesday/Thursday are good for 747s because (a) on Tuesdays, QF has all of its normal runs plus QF11 is a 747 that day, and (b) QF12 is an arriving 747 on Thursday mornings. There are also SQ and CX freighters, TG pax...
* MD11s are daily if my memory serves me correctly, with FedEx and/or UPS.

As far as your airlines, you'll have all kinds of things in SYD that ADL doesn't such as BA, AA, UA, Asiana, JAL, ANA, etc.

[Werner K]

Thanks everyone for your responses.

Getting used to Sydney traffic make take a bit especially when trying to look for a turn off etc.

I'll print off some detailed maps & instructions before we leave. Is there a reference point for Shep's Mound which could be punched into a GPS?

regards,

Werner

[Paul L]

Depending on your GPS, 50 Ross Smith Ave, Mascot