Spot the airfield: Armidale

On a Qantas flight from Brisbane to Sydney aboard a Boeing 737-800, the cloud cover turned from broken to few soon after we crossed the state border, which allowed me to spot Armidale airport. That's all part of the game of spot the airfield which I like to play from the back of the airliner.

The town centre is to the right of the shadow cast by the cumulus cloud, while the aerodrome is to the top-left of the photo, near the New England Highway .

Armidale airport (YARM) has a main 05/23 sealed runway with a comfortable length of 1738m, and a shorter 09/27 grassed gravel runway. The elevation is 3556ft, which is very high by Australian standards and is easily explained by the location of Armidale on a plateau in the middle of the Great Dividing Range. I guess local student pilots learn very early on the importance of computing take-off and landing distances.

After Armidale "our" airliner tracked in the direction of Scone, passing over lake Glenbawn and the Hunter River.

Just a minute later, an open-sky mine (of the type sung by Midnight Oil before its lead singer chose an alternative career path) could be seen south of Muswellbrook. That's still the Hunter River in the background

And for a slightly more challenging game of spot the airfield, what about photographing Boeing's factory from the International Space Station?