Friday, November 21, 2008

Plane spotting and model collecting



I've been in Toronto since 1996 but it was only recently (the past 3-4 years) that I discovered the joys of spotting, plane spotting that is!! If you like spotting and have gone spotting in Toronto then you definitely know of Rwy 23, located near the famous Wendy's and Country Style fast food outlets on Airport Road . It's marvellous how close you can get to the jets. The other location at Rwy 24 is just as amazing, but you just get to view them passing overhead before touching down seconds later as they do at Rwy 23, but no opportunity to poke your face into the fence!!



However this joy of getting to the planes so close as they come over your head was recently changed when I visited Sydney and was able to get up close and personal with the jets taxiing on their way to Rwy 34L.  No jets going over your head but the joy to see them pass by so close and perhaps wave first to the International captains and be waved back at most of the times, was such an awesome experience.



I just had to make the pilgrimage to the same spot again before I left Australia. A quick search using the Sydney buses website and very soon the route using a single bus from Circular Quay and I was on my way!!



And unlike Toronto where spotting is only feasible in the summer, unless you have a nice warm car to sit in on a cold winter's day (which I don't since I use transit here too to get to the spotting place) Sydney seems to have the best weather most of the time! So many other spotting locations in the world and hopefully will be able to be spotting at them in the near future.

The next closest thing to not being able to fly in a blink of an eye, and be transported to a convenient spotting location with the same measure of a blink of an eye is, you guessed right, being able to have a model plane close at hand, to ogle over!!




Which brings me to the next level that this obsession has taken me to, plane collecting! In a matter of just a year and more I went from a mere ten or less models to over a hundred!
Again, no major feat considering there are others out there with not hundred, but thousands of models, oh well make that a thousand and more!!  It's great to have these models close at hand but the madness had to stop. It's been a long while since I did get some models, and I hope to keep it this way. But with new long sought models being announced it won't be long before I am on my way to adding some more to the existing collection. 

So here's hoping to come across others who are equally passionate about collecting jets, and going around hoping to spot planes too!!

1 comment:

  1. Cool blog!

    If you're ever on one of my flights, I'd be happy to get the crew to take a picture with you!

    Sydney is VERY spotter friendly (well, I'm not sure about now, but they used to be). They figured that the spotters were going to hang around anyway, so they created a program whereby the spotters are 'unofficial' security- they report possible breaches, birds and runway debris to a hotline number and the airport can take care of it. Cool huh?

    If you Google it, the SYD Spotters have a whole web site dedicated to the airport, best vantage points, and so on.

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