My first adventure

January 23, 2009
1200-1330

Airport: SFO
Location: Bayfront Park, Millbrae
Equipment: Nikon Trailblazer 10x42
Registrations collected: 36
Airlines: 13
Makes: 10

It's been raining for days in the Bay Area and I've had an uncontrollable urge to get out to the airport to spot. An unfortunate combination. Ever since I learned about the hobby of collecting airplane tail numbers (instead of simply observing, which I've been doing for years), I've been just dying to get out to SFO to get started. So when I checked the forecast and saw just a 40% chance of precipitation across the bay, I decided to get out and go.

Bayfront Park was the destination. I was able to find parking in the park's tiny lot, and headed out as quickly as possible to the rocks along the shore to watch a few heavies coming in on the 28s. I was quite disappointed to realize that my 10x42 "rented" binoculars were not strong enough to see the tail numbers on the planes that had particularly small numbers. I was able to record registrations from a couple of Cathay Pacific 747s and Korean Airways 777s. I headed up to watch the smaller jets departing from the 1s and collected quite a few numbers.

Highlights:

Spotting my first A340 (-313X, Air France, F-GLZJ) since learning the Airbus line. It landed on 28L too quickly for me to get its tail number, but I was eventually able to see it when it taxied to a gate near my post.

One United 757-222 departing from runway 10. It was the only one to go the reverse direction - they quickly switched back to the 28s. I've never seen anything like that before.

My Chipotle picnic lunch.

Looking up from my notepad to see and San Francisco cop with his K9 starting at me. I was sure I was going to be asked to stop or at least questioned, but tried saying a simple "hello" and he passed right by.

The rainbow that lingered for well over an hour, framing snow capped mountains on the other side of the bay. Gorgeous!