Message posted by lone wolf on September 03, 2004 at 9:03:53 PST:
I set up a telescope at the Hollywood Blvd spot and spent at least an hour there on a Saturday without a visit from security. I noticed the planes were heading towards the south, so the golf course location would work for photographs. I think bringing a spotting scope will be tough from Germany, though you certainly have some of the best optics in the business in your back yard. I was using 50x magnification at the Hollywood Blvd spot. I don't think you could get a tail number with binoculars from Hollywood Blvd. At 50x, you will need a tripod as well. It has been my experience that during a flag, the planes take off to the north. This may be for noise abatement. In that case, the golf course location will not be useful. I've always seen them land towards the south. For photography from LVB (where they have been hassling viewers), I found a 400mm lens plus 1.4x teleconverter will get images where the tail number can be seen, but just barely. I don't have very fast optics, i.e. I shot at F8, so a monopod was required. The planes are about a mile away from LVB, so maybe you could get a tail number with very high power binoculars, but you would probably want an audio recorder to log the numbers. My lens/teleconverter set up is only about 11x magnification, so 15x binoculars and a monopod might get the tail numbers.
In Reply to: Spotting at Nellis AFB posted by Martin on September 03, 2004 at 2:27:23 PST:
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