Of course, the weather took a bit of a turn, from sunny and blue skies to overcast and grey right when the Convair approached the airport.
To make things worse, the moment the CV580 entered the circuit the runway was changed from 34 to 16 so my anticipated landing shots went up in thick, black Allison turboprop smoke
From Kekerenga Street (keep going past the playground area), you have a great view of the threshold of RWY 34 for both landing and departing aircraft.
The A320 was shot using 400mm on a 1.3x crop body. The taxiway is closer but it is too close to the fence and adjacent car park so you get a lot of clutter in your photos.
Next I went to the old bunker at Moa Point. The access road is at the corner of Kekerenga Street and Ahuriri Street.
From the cliff face in front of the old bunker, you have a great view of the approach to RWY 34 and are able to shoot the landing aircraft top-down.
These were all taken with a 1.4x converter on my 100-400mm L II (and 1.3x crop) to give me 560mm. You probably don't need a converter for the jet liners but I was aiming for the CV580 which is about the size of a Q300.
And as the runway was turned but it was still before mid day (so the sun is still on the eastern side of the runway), I went to the RW 16 spot up at Wexford Road - where I just arrived a minute too late to catch the CV580 landing. The Pelorus Air Cessna 206 was completely new to me, I never heard of Pelorus Air. It appears they operate out of Picton with a small fleet of Cessnas.
The Air Chathams flights on Monday and Friday are scheduled to arrive 11-ish and depart 1-ish, it's not entirely an exact science. The problem with the departure is that the sun is usually on top of the runway at that time so pretty much neither side is great.
So I decided to give the end of Tirangi Road (near the old tower, it's still there but no longer used) a try as I've only been shooting from Bridge Street before.
From the end of Tirangi Street (where the road stops and a foot path leads down the hill to where the northern part of Tirangi Street continues), you do have a good view of RWY 16 though you do have shoot around some trees and power lines, but it's workable. This could be a great spot in the late afternoon, but you do get quite some heat waves on hot summer days.
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