Quick Question

Subject: Quick Question 2009-06-22, 08:14

Just a quick question for those of you local to this base. How busy are the Tucanos on a routine day most of the time? Thinking of perhaps making my first non graduation visit at some point and just wanted to know if the Tucanos are generally fairly constant activity or not?

Location : york Spotter Watch Member : no

mondays can have a slow start,but rest of week including fridays can be busy,thursdays in my opinion are the best.

Location : Harrogate Spotter Watch Member : No

I had a bit some time off between jobs and went up on quite a few occasions Feb - May and compared to most other bases in the UK its v busy indeed. I have had many occasions when there has been @ 20 on the pan and you can see most of them fly in a 2-3 hour period usually. On the downside, they taxi past the spotters car park or fly that way less often due to prevailing winds and the fact that they have two active runways - so it's as well to check the wind direction as the sun/cloud in the forecast before you travel.

The main runway is 04-22. In a nutshell if the wind is blowing from the north (rare) you can have a field day as you will get taxi out past you and approach, using runway 22. Mostly its 04 so you would expect a taxi past on landing but not so. There is a short cut via an earlier turn off to the pan on landing that needs @ 500m for full frame shots, not so bad for spotting but ruins my day for pix. The exception to this is that any big visitors park on that shortcut meaning that on landing everything comes past you (recent-ish parked visitor examples inc BAC111 and Chinook) and it gets used for Tucano compass swings with the same result.

If they are flying on the cross runway 10-28, then Tucano's taxi past you on the way to the 28 threshold (ie for generally winds from the east) but if they are flying 10 - then stay at home, you will get nothing anywhere near you at all from the spotters park. There's supposed to be one spot on the road further up for that runway - but my advice would be to save it for another day when the wind has swung round.

Hope this useful.

Location : my house Spotter Watch Member : no

03-21 runways

Location : abeam DSA/EGCN Spotter Watch Member : no

was there recently,times 1230-1255 then approx 1510-1530

logged 20 different frames,some different ones coming back in after longer
sorties.