Planespotting documentary interview opportunities

[Bluetail]

I think a lot will depend on how the interviewer frames the questions. Sometimes we enthusiasts are deliberately set up as figures of fun for the audience. Whilst I appreciate the offer, and applaud the original poster for the offer, I'd run 100 miles way from a camera and microphone!

As a very old git (70+ a bit) the way some of our colleagues answered what appears to be a genuine request for help was not very helpful. It may help to reinforce the stereotype 'outsiders' have of the enthusiast fraternity. Just my personal view, please feel free to differ.

And so far not a single response from the original poster........I wonder

[Agent K]

In my day or at least when I started, it was a duffle coat with the wooden ties and metal aircraft badges (used to buy those at the shop on the Queens building LHR).

I still proudly have my Lockheed Tristar badge I bought from the QB shop in 1974 on display!! This year I complete 37 years with a rather large airline group at LHR and working with a number of the airlines I saw in those younger days, and have seen more than I can ever have imagined that day, from the inside and travelled many many places from there. Pre pandemic I would drive past the now fenced and blocked corner of LHR we parked on the grass verge to have our picnic and watch the aircraft. Great memories!

[fox4g]

Some of these comments are so true and so funny but on a serious note whenever TV or Radio covers aviation they always have a knack of selecting the Plane spotter and not the Enthusiast. I've seen it on TV so often and annoys the the proper Enthusiast.

[Agent K]

Some of these comments are so true and so funny but on a serious note whenever TV or Radio covers aviation they always have a knack of selecting the Plane spotter and not the Enthusiast. I've seen it on TV so often and annoys the the proper Enthusiast.

Yeh, there's a whole spectrum of backgrounds to the enthusiast, and to tar all with the same brush is a little disingenuous at times! notwithstanding the OP asked a question and I'm sure that message would come out in interviews.

[pg1610]

Some of these comments are so true and so funny but on a serious note whenever TV or Radio covers aviation they always have a knack of selecting the Plane spotter and not the Enthusiast. I've seen it on TV so often and annoys the the proper Enthusiast.

So what is a proper enthusiast ?? ,

can a plane spotter not be an enthusiast in your eyes,

[Pi]

Does the successful applicant for the interview need to wear a camouflaged jacket covered with aviation patches, wear a baseball cap with a USN patch on the front, have a scanner in a breast pocket with an ear-piece, have a face covered in zits and is generally a bit whiffy, has an enormous camera bag covered in squadron stickers and has a multitude of enormous white lenses?

And a beer belly ! err not me someone I know ! A'hem !!

[andygolfer]

Some of these comments are so true and so funny but on a serious note whenever TV or Radio covers aviation they always have a knack of selecting the Plane spotter and not the Enthusiast. I've seen it on TV so often and annoys the the proper Enthusiast.

So what is a proper enthusiast ?? ,

can a plane spotter not be an enthusiast in your eyes,

In MY eyes a spotter is one of several types of enthusiast as I eluded to earlier. It's a different type of enthusiast but equally dedicated to his hobby of number collecting. I do find some of them a bit odd when they look at a strobe flashing in the sky 20 miles away on a clear night and regard that as a bone-fide tick in the book, that would be like me pointing my camera at blue sky , taking a photo and saying well it was there somewhere and it was such and such an aircraft. I don't see the enjoyment in that, I like to see enough to appreciate the subject.

[roger4]

I know a spotter who (allegedly) underlines aircraft in his book if he sees them on TV!

[Red-Eye-Knight]

I think a lot will depend on how the interviewer frames the questions. Sometimes we enthusiasts are deliberately set up as figures of fun for the audience. Whilst I appreciate the offer, and applaud the original poster for the offer, I'd run 100 miles way from a camera and microphone!

As a very old git (70+ a bit) the way some of our colleagues answered what appears to be a genuine request for help was not very helpful. It may help to reinforce the stereotype 'outsiders' have of the enthusiast fraternity. Just my personal view, please feel free to differ.

And so far not a single response from the original poster........I wonder

Would you have responded after the way he was shot down in the 1st response to his question?

No instead you thought it was funny and for use of your own words "absolute class"

[JLewis_Aviation]

I haven’t responded as I don’t really know where to start. As Harry (osprey555) pointed out I myself am a spotter/photographer. I take pictures, collect registrations and prefer my photos with the sun on them so what does that make me? I never knew there was a difference between a spotter and an enthusiast before making this post so thanks for enlightening me. Thanks for the genuine offers of help,I will be contacting those people in the coming days with a few questions.

Kind Regards
Joe Lewis

[Knightsy14]

Hi Joe,

I am more than happy to help you out with the questionnaire etc, fire away

A large contrast in comments coming from this thread , knowing Joe personally he is what you would call an avid aviation enthusiast, recording numbers, taking photos, tracking movements etc.
A young lad looking to gather some information for his college work, posing the offer to those who he believes to have a level of knowledge and experience to provide some good results.
I would have thought that some of the members here who have mentioned they have a number of years of experience being an enthusiast would jump at the chance to help a young lad better his knowledge and complete his relevant college work...

Hopefully, you have a good number of people willing to help you out, Joe

[JLewis_Aviation]

Thank you for your offer mate, I’ll send some questions off in the next day or so

[raptor9]

ANDYGOLFER. I started my enthusiast 'career] on the grass at Heathrow after walking through the tunnel 65 years ago!. [I'm 80 in October]. Seen all the changes, Stratocruiser to Concorde and beyond. It excited me enough to have traveled over most of the world to pursue it. Underlined the Reggie books for a few years, but then simply became an enthusiast rather than a spotter. I dislike the description that is attached to 'spotters'. I don't spot, I am tho' an enthusiast of all things Aviation. I don't myself, see the point of number crunching, but it is never a good thing for people in general to run down other guy's hobbies however much it differs from one's own. The main thing is that what they do, it is their passion, and the most boring people in the world I have met are the people with no passion or hobby. Regards, John. [Love you civvy stuff]

[Red-Eye-Knight]

Hi Joe,

I am more than happy to help you out with the questionnaire etc, fire away

A large contrast in comments coming from this thread , knowing Joe personally he is what you would call an avid aviation enthusiast, recording numbers, taking photos, tracking movements etc.
A young lad looking to gather some information for his college work, posing the offer to those who he believes to have a level of knowledge and experience to provide some good results.
I would have thought that some of the members here who have mentioned they have a number of years of experience being an enthusiast would jump at the chance to help a young lad better his knowledge and complete his relevant college work...

Hopefully, you have a good number of people willing to help you out, Joe

Very well said glad some people are actually trying to help the lad out with his college work.

Joe if you would like to ask myself feel free to drop me a message

[JLewis_Aviation]

Hi Joe,

I am more than happy to help you out with the questionnaire etc, fire away

A large contrast in comments coming from this thread , knowing Joe personally he is what you would call an avid aviation enthusiast, recording numbers, taking photos, tracking movements etc.
A young lad looking to gather some information for his college work, posing the offer to those who he believes to have a level of knowledge and experience to provide some good results.
I would have thought that some of the members here who have mentioned they have a number of years of experience being an enthusiast would jump at the chance to help a young lad better his knowledge and complete his relevant college work...

Hopefully, you have a good number of people willing to help you out, Joe

Very well said glad some people are actually trying to help the lad out with his college work.

Joe if you would like to ask myself feel free to drop me a message

Will do, I will come up with some questions tomorrow and get them away I appreciate the helpful answers, we got there eventually

[Pat Murphy]

I reckon that about 99% of FC members absolutely detest being classed as 'plane spotters', I know that I do, I'm an 'aviation enthusiast' and have been for over 5 decades.

Does the successful applicant for the interview need to wear a camouflaged jacket covered with aviation patches, wear a baseball cap with a USN patch on the front, have a scanner in a breast pocket with an ear-piece, have a face covered in zits and is generally a bit whiffy, has an enormous camera bag covered in squadron stickers and has a multitude of enormous white lenses?

If so, I'll drop him a PM right now!

Seriously, I've been all of the above at some point, some by choice and some of it hormonal rather than soap dodging This hobby is all things to all people and mostly starts off, from my 50 plus years experience, as a fascination in things that fly. It does seem to evolve for some into a photographic thing (I count myself in that number) and yet for others, it's always been more about ticking numbers off. Each to their own
Pat

[cat1]

Would you have responded after the way he was shot down in the 1st response to his question?

No instead you thought it was funny and for use of your own words "absolute class"

the first response shot no one down in flames! Mike simply made a joke, and Bluetail said he found the joke funny.
chill out

(I rest my case)

[Red-Eye-Knight]

Some joke when I was not the only person who thought it was rude the way it came across, People should be more careful about what the type as others have said it sounded rude

[andygolfer]

ANDYGOLFER. I started my enthusiast 'career] on the grass at Heathrow after walking through the tunnel 65 years ago!. [I'm 80 in October]. Seen all the changes, Stratocruiser to Concorde and beyond. It excited me enough to have traveled over most of the world to pursue it. Underlined the Reggie books for a few years, but then simply became an enthusiast rather than a spotter. I dislike the description that is attached to 'spotters'. I don't spot, I am tho' an enthusiast of all things Aviation. I don't myself, see the point of number crunching, but it is never a good thing for people in general to run down other guy's hobbies however much it differs from one's own. The main thing is that what they do, it is their passion, and the most boring people in the world I have met are the people with no passion or hobby. Regards, John. [Love you civvy stuff]

You've been doing it even longer than me John!!! The only grass I've ever seen at Heathrow is between the runways and taxiways, never any to sit on. Feb 1968 was my first visit and it was a train to London , tube to Hounslow West and 89B bus to the airport, always on the upper deck left hand side so we could see arrivals and the BOAC ramp! The introduction of the A1 bus was a luxury (even to one of those 4 yorkshiremen).
I wasn't intending to run down number collectors but just illustrating the extremes some go to in the hobby, a flashing strobe 20 or more miles away hardly merits a tick - surely you want to have some perception of what it looks like? I still go out regularly with the guy I made that first trip to Heathrow with (sorry I am focussing more on the civil side as that's what I did in those days, I only had RAF Wethersfield within cycling distance as far as military was concerned) and he does both photography and number collecting (which I regard as spotting) but he is quite strict with himself in that if he identifies an OTT trail from a flight radar app he only counts it as a view / spot if he can see the aircraft at the head of the trail, that I suppose is setting some sort of limit on what 'counts' , something I've seen discussed many times and with many different views. Photography - the other main side of the aviation enthusiasts' hobby, is a bit more clear cut - if you can't get a pic of it them you've missed it so that bit of controversy that I induced doesn't apply as much although we all take 'record shots' from time to time to confirm our sighting.

One thing that has changed over the years is the number of aids there are to our hobby. In my youth I thought all my christmasses had come at once when I received my first airband radio and other spotters / enthusiasts (I was more of a spotter in those days so i'll use the term) not as lucky as me would gather round , well pre-covid fortunately, to try to hear and decipher the transmissions much to the delight of the gathered ensemble when I/we/they succeeded. AND THEN..... we had to wait for Air Pictorial or another publication to come out 6 weeks later and creep into WH Smiths and look at their movements page without buying the publication, sparse to say the least but occasionally it came up trumps, then later the various enthusiasts' magazines would be subscribed to one buying LAAS, another Air Britain News and so on and sharing the spoils to make our pocket money go further. Later on, I for my sins and to the misfortune of the readers wrote the Heathrow and East Anglian movements reports for Stansted Aviation News every month on an old typewriter using bottle upon bottle of tippex as my typing skills were non existent - then I got a PC with a 20MB (not GB) hard drive - I felt like God, all those xmasses had come round again. That's how it was in those olden days though and there was a lot of waiting time for all the reports to be published.
Hasn't it changed especially since the creation of the internet? That airband radio was like a lifeline otherwise it was restricted to what you could see through 10x50 binoculars, if I had to rely on that today I'd be stuffed - tinnitus makes it hard to hear anything clearly and keratoconus and astigmatism make using binoculars a lottery. Can't hear, can't see, Hmmm - if I had laryngitis as well I could audition for a re-make of Tommy (that Who classic!). I still have a VHF radio but use it very little as especially with civil stuff the flight radar apps can give you that instant answer that we would have craved for all those years ago. My mate (the same one and yes he has put up with my warped sense of humour for 57 years) still carries a military capable airband radio and I notice they are used far more by the military side of the hobby - another breakdown into sub-species, sorry. FR24 and so on are far more info friendly to the civil fraternity but go to Lakenheath or Mildenhall (other bases are available) and a radio is far more of a must have to know what's going on and those like me who don't have that military airband have to be forever grateful to those on FC who post up to the minute info about what's about to arrive / depart / overfly and so on so at this point I'll say a long overdue THANK YOU even those who use that 'feet wet' term than I find irritating - without your posts here I and many others would end up totally in the dark. And of course that makes the other point that there are forums and email groups like this that we all rely on so much, instant info easily accessible- what a difference.

Photographer wise the enthusiasts have also had one major change and that's what really switched me over to photography from spotting, and that is the digital age. Gone are the days when I thought I'd been extravagant if I used a whole 36 frame roll of 35mm film and like the magazines you had to sent it off and then wait ages to get the results back so there's another technological leap/ side benefit, On the average day I'll take literally hundreds of shots nowadays and that little screen on the back instantly tells me if I've got the settings right or wrong and if I've got the image sharp (I'd never heard of image stabilisation until I reached 55 years old), makes it oh so simple really. all those aircraft I saw in the past and couldn't afford the film to photograph them or taking photos on black and white film so I could process them at home and print in the kitchen with my home made blackouts over the window! It's a different age now and so much easier. I must confess here I keep a record of the registrations of all the aircraft that I see so I must be a spotter as well. After several scrap and start again efforts at cataloguing my photos I settled on starting with the registration in the photo name so in a way I suppose I'm going full circle and getting all those titles correct probably takes as long as it did to underline all those registration in the paper registers although I don't have to re-do it every year, one of the reasons I gave up keeping a comprehensive record of what I'd seen.

I know I've waffled on a bit but hopefully there are a few interesting points some of which might even help Joe with his project if only to illustrate how the hobby has changed in 50 years or so. I can't make Mildenhall or Lakenheath on the 11th but hope those that can are able to make useful contributions.
PM me Joe if you would like to do anything 'remotely'

Andy

[cat1]

thus was created, the story of andygolfer