Friday, May 22, 2009

Spot the airfield: Aeropelican, New South Wales

On a Qantas flight from Sydney to Brisbane, I was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the Aeropelican unlicensed airfield (YPEC) between the clouds.


The airfield is located in-between the highway and Lake Macquarie, which is why the ERSA entry says "high vehicles on the highway at the eastern end of the runway, or high masted vessels on the extended centre-line to the west, may infringe obstacle clearance gradient from the runways ends". The runway is oriented 07/25, is 820 meters long and is kind of sealed near the middle.

My guess is that the airfield is named after the Aeropelican regional airline which used to operate from the field, and now flies a modest fleet of three BAE Jetstream 32 turboprops out of Williamstown, north of Newcastle.

Even more interesting than Aeropelican is the tiny bit of land in the top left corner of the photo. This is the suburb of Rathmines, which used to be home to the largest RAAF seaplane base during WWII.

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