 Hi guys and welcome back to my YouTube channel. This is Daniel Rossell and you can find videos here about life in Israel. I've done quite a lot of travelling in the past year and this has sort of rekindled my interest in aviation. I spent a decent part of my free time in Ireland growing up, sitting on the edge of Cork airport with my friend Chris, watching airplanes land and take off. I did a couple of flight lessons too and finishing a PPL remains one of my major life aspirations. For those who haven't heard about it, this hobby of sitting on the edge of airports is called plane spotting and it's what people fascinated by planes who can't afford to actually become amateur pilots too in their spare time. These days I live in Israel so I've been doing some plane spotting at Ben-Gurion airport near Tel Aviv lately. In this video I want to share a few tips for plane spotting at this particular airfield without getting on the wrong side of security and of course finding a good spot. Firstly, here's a simplified aerodrome chart for Ben-Gurion or Lima Lima Bravo Golf. As you can see there are three runways. Runway 0826 is the longest at over 13,000 feet. Runway 2103 is about a 9,000 feet strip and runway 1230 which intersects with the two other runways is roughly 10,000 feet in length. Runway 26 is the most common departure runway which puts departing aircraft out over the Mediterranean on a westerly course. For arrivals it of course depends on prevailing winds. Landings generally alternate between runway 30 and runway 21. Seasoned plane spotters are accustomed to bringing along a VHF radio scanner in order to tune into ATC comms and the ATIS frequency but in Israel this is a very bad idea because listening to VHF frequencies at airports is prohibited by law and can result in jail time and you also won't find any ATC feeds for LLBG online. Therefore your best bet is to download and use an app called Flightradar24. This should make it immediately obvious which landing runway is in use and there are of course no legal restrictions around using it. Now let's talk about places to do the plane spotting. For capturing departures coming off runway 26 the Israel airport authority has set up a sort of official flight spotting deck. Be aware that this is somewhat far removed from the runway so if you're planning on taking photos and videos of what you're spotting you're going to need a pretty decent telephoto lens. The designated plane spotting location isn't marked on the map but I'll put a google map link in the description of this video to help you find it. Basically you enter the airport through the main entrance and then you can use google maps or ways to find the actual viewing platform. It's located in a part of the airport that's used for airfield operations and it butts up basically on the perimeter fence. Security patrols do regularly stop by the platform to make sure everything's okay but of course if you're not doing anything illegal you shouldn't have any problems. I spot it here somewhat frequently with a tripod and camera setup and so far I haven't faced any problems whatsoever. You'll also encounter there a pretty eclectic community of plane spotters. I've seen some real hardcore's who have literally come directly off flights with their luggage and everything and engage in a bit of plane spotting before reluctantly leaving the world of aviation behind. I can't blame them as a wise man called Da Vinci once said once you have tasted flight you'll forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward. For watching arrivals onto runway 21 the best place to spot is located next to the big shopping complex in Yehude which is located in the nearby village of Lehude which literally butts onto the airfield. I recommend simply putting big yehude into your GPS tool like ways or google maps and parking your car there. After parking you can walk through a few grass fields to find the ideal angle to capture the incoming arrivals. This spot is located immediately next to a pretty busy road the 461 so it's not really the most pleasant place to plane spot but you should have success. The rooftops of any offices in the shopping complex should also afford pretty great views of arrivals although I haven't tried that out yet. For arrivals onto runway 30 you can try finding somewhere to set up your camera and tripod near the gas station marked here located just off of road 40. Again I recommend saving these locations into google maps before setting out as it will simplify the time spent fumbling around with navigation and after a while finding these spots will become second nature. Again you can use flight radar 24 to see pretty easily whether a particular inbound of interest is going to land on runway 30 or 21 or you can just look up the wind conditions at the airport and take a pretty good guess as to what the landing runway is. I hope this video has been helpful to get you started. Although security at Ben Gurion is extremely tight airport security seems pretty tolerant of plane spotters at the designated location they've set up. Note that there are some military installations in close proximity to Ben Gurion airfield therefore it's important to pay attention to any signs indicating that photography is forbidden and of course it's also a good idea not to go snooping around any place that's clearly not looking for visitors. Happy plane spotting!