2016 and 2019: Four of us go to, among other places, Italia. Two of us are semi-serious photographers, two not.

The Christmas before last, I think it was: The two photographers were given a joint Christmas present by the two non-photographers. The present was a doors-off helicopter flight over Sydney for the purpose of doing a photo shoot. The problem was that the nasty little bug was still lingering from time to time in 2021 and 2022, so there wasn't much of an opportunity in the early part of the year. Also, other aspects of life got in the way.

End of 2022: We realised that the time for the flight voucher was starting to tick down and that we would need to make a booking soon. The problem was that we were in the middle of summer then, so the sun would be high in the sky by the time we took off. I therefore scanned the sunrise and sunset times and while none of them were perfect, if we went in the morning, and just before daylight saving ended (which happened on the first weekend in April), we would at least be within an hour of the golden hour. There should be plenty of still (relatively) low angled sun to cast shadows of the places that we would be shooting. Also, going in the morning meant that the sun would be behind us, whereas the last time I did this sort of flight (but not with the doors off) it was more to the front of us. (See my gallery "Sydney From Above, Attempt 1" if interested.)

I therefore made a booking for 24 March, which was as close to sunrise as I could get except for the week after. That week, I kept in my back pocket as a backup. Unfortunately the earliest booking I could get was 10:00.

Thursday 23 March, the day before the flight: The weather was atrocious. It was raining in buckets. The company called me and asked me if I wanted to postpone. I agreed enthusiastically since that was no weather to be shooting in. Also, I mentioned our desire to go as early as possible and we were flipped with the flight that was departing just after 09:00 for the following week.

Friday 24 March: The day dawned bright and clear. However by 10 AM, our original launch time, it had clouded over which meant that had the flight gone ahead we would have been shooting in colourless, shadowless grey light. We dodged a bullet on that one.

Friday 31 March: I decide to drive to the airport early, specifically to a lookout on the eastern side of the airport called Shep's Mound. It was named after a plane spotter called Bruce Shepherd who popularised the spot via his early online bulletin board. He died in 2005, and in 2017 the airport management built a couple of mounds and a shelter at this spot to facilitate plane watching and named it in his honour. Unfortunately, I was forced onto the wrong road courtesy of the ingenious road designs of the NSW Roads and Maritime Services department, and arrived 15 to 20 minutes late. Still, I got some golden light to shoot some aircraft landing, taking off or taxiing.

This is one such shot. It is a QantasLink DHC-8-315Q (commonly known as the Dash 8) twin turboprop commuter plane. The Dash 8 can carry between 50 and 100 passengers, depending on the model, though the -300 series are mostly 50-seaters. (I confirmed that by checking the Qantas seat map for this aircraft; 12 rows of 4 seats (2 on either side of the aisle), and 2 at the front of the cabin.) Specifically, this is VH-SBJ, which QantasLink has named the Griffith, after a town in the Riverina area of southern New South Wales. So where is it heading today? In one of the less common coincidences, it is heading for its namesake. This is flight QF2121, Sydney to Griffith, having just taken off from Sydney.

Oh, and the helicopter flight? We found the office. We (finally) found two parking spots. We did the preflight briefing. We put on our lifejackets. We climbed into the helicopter.

The helicopter engine wouldn't start.

We went back to the office to let the starter motor cool down. We waited. We tried again. Theeeee blaaaaddes turrnnned sloooowly... but the engine still would not start. We got out. We said that we would be in touch about booking a new time, which is probably going to have to be in the middle of winter to keep us as close as possible to sunrise now that daylight saving has ended.

Thus, you can expect to see a few more shots from this place somewhere around the end of June.