Scotland West Coast of Scotland.....Where's best for ground and aerial photos?

[Dean B]

Hi All

A friend and I are going to the west coast of Scotland mid October to capture some of the beautiful locations and scenery it has to offer, both in photo and and video, also aerial shots too, I'm a qualified UAV pilot my friend is a professional photographer with many years experience.

The question I have is does any have any recommended or "must shoot" locations we should go to?

Coming from Southern England we're going to start somewhere west and south Scotland on a Friday and work our way up the west coast till Monday so we need help choosing a beautiful start location and help plotting the other must see locations, we're happy to do 2 or 3 stops each day, how far up the west coast we'll get I don't know, we'll just book the first hotel in the southern part of Scotland then the Saturday and Sunday we'll just stop at a hotel or B&B on route

Any help will be much appreciated, of course will share the footage we capture too

Thanks all

Dean

 

[stumac]

Applecross would be a good visit just for the road to it , with great views overlooking Skye .

What's the score with the MOD and low flying aircraft though ? Plenty of jets flying about that part of the world I certainly wouldn't want to be held responsible if I caused on to drop from the sky

 

[Dean B]

Hi Stumac

Its something I have requested information on from the CAA.

Any airfield within 5 miles of me flying I have to request permission from the air traffic controller but to be honest the legal height I can fly is 400 foot, which I would genuinely stick to as its my license obviously at risk otherwise, most shots would be from around 100 foot so wouldn't be causing any issues to any aircraft's at all

Thanks
Dean

 

[Slim_adi]

i'd second applecross (and all the Wester ross penninsula to be honest) we were there in June - unfortunately in very heavy cloud and mist but on the few brief moments the cloud parted the views across to skye were utterley gobsmacking

 

[Alastair]

What's the score with the MOD and low flying aircraft though ? Plenty of jets flying about that part of the world I certainly wouldn't want to be held responsible if I caused on to drop from the sky

NATS publishes maps of activity areas free online and there are free online maps of NOTAMs that provide up-to-date changes and temporary allocations,e.g. over a large area centred on the Bute peninsula you have the following notice for Wednesday this week..

HEL OPR IN THE ALLOCATED REGION. NIGHT SECTOR 1A AND 2B. ACTIVATION
OF THE HMS GANNET / BUTE NIGHT TRAINING AREA. ONE SEA KING WITH FULL
LIGHTING WILL OPERATE AT VARIOUS LOCATIONS AND ON VARIOUS ROUTES
WITHIN THE FOLLOWING AREA. 554000N 0045000W - 554500N 0053000W -
561500N 0053000W - 561500N 0050000W - 560000N 0044000W -
554000N 0045000W.
MAX HEIGHT 750FT AGL. MILITARY AIRCRAFT SHALL AVOID THE
AREA. CTC 93263 4353. 15/11/001/OPSLF​

So there's a very low level Sea King going to be operating...


The NATS Enroute Information pages and the NOTAM maps are a valuable source of information if you're interested in all things aviation.

 

[Tringa]

I was about to add my suggestions until I read the original post more carefully. If all has gone according to plan then Dean's trip is over, but I'd like to see the results especially as October was a cracking month in NW Scotland.

Dave

 

[tom24]

HMS Gannet has went private but there is/was always excercises on the go apart from being one of the busiest sar stations, however, there are plenty private 'wee' planes flying out of Prestwick airport everyday along with the consumer, cargo and military planes.
I guess that that's common knowledge with aviators.