Today I went to Schiphol along with my dad in hopes to spot the Dutch F35s that were training there. Seeing the Air Force at Schiphol is really unusual so it drew a big crowd and it was a bit of a guessing game as to where the F35s would take off.

We went to Polderbaan (36L/18R) first in the early afternoon but quite quickly it became clear to me the F35s would take off from Buitenveldertbaan (09/27). The MRTT (A330 refueling plane) that also was part of the exercise did in fact take off from Polderbaan so sadly we missed that!

From Polderbaan, we jumped in the car and drove to Buitenveldertbaan. I was unsure if we would be on time but as we stepped out of the car, the first of four F35s took off. My dad immediately spotted it but due to low visibility conditions, it took me until the fourth (!) plane to actually see it.

The fog was hanging quite low so the window for me to take a picture was small. I did have the F35 in my sight but couldn’t get my camera in focus in time to get a picture. That was a bit of a bummer but to be honest, the goal was to see the F35 with my dad and we succeeded in that.

The sound of these jet fighters is just amazing! You can feel it in your entire body and is way louder than the other planes taking off.

We went to Schiphol quite early today and started off at the bridge that airplanes cross when taxiing to and from Polderbaan. After having been there for a couple of minutes, we took off in the car again and went to Buitenveldertbaan. We parked at McDonald’s but walked along the bicycle lane towards a better spot, just because most airplanes were already nearly invisble in the fog when they reached the parking lot.

It was quite foggy as I already said which does lead to darker pictures but it also means you get the wing fluff! After we saw a couple of planes, me and my dad went for a bite of lunch near Kaagbaan. After lunch we went to Polderbaan and again to Buitenveldertbaan for the F35s so we moved around quite a bit!

To be honest, I wasn’t too mad that I didn’t get an F35 picture. Yeah it would have been really cool but our mission of seeing them was a succes and I had a really great day with my dad as well! Couldn’t call that anything other than a succes!