I went to the park yesterday and it was a nice cool day so I was reading and another guy came up about 20 feet and procedued to set up a telescope. Now it was about 1pm, so I was wondering what this was about.
He then set up the scope, set up his lawnchair and wrote something in a book.
Now about 10 minutes later a plane flew overhead as it was landing. The park is close to the airport so when the planes come in you can actually make out if it’s a United or American or Delta or whatever airline from the tail as the park is about 15 minute drive.
So the guy jumps up looks through the telescope at the plane, writes something in a book, then sits down. About 10 minutes later another plane is landing and he jumps up, looks at it thru the telescope then writes something in a book.
This went on for over an hour then I left. He was still out there.
What was he doing?
At first I thought --terrorist-- but he wasn’t making any attempt to conceal this, besides who would you call to report this? It isn’t a 911 type of thing? And there were cops on bikes riding the thru the park and they saw him.
Any idea what he might have been doing. Or looking at?
1.) Terrorist, and a sloppy one at that. At least hide in the bushes, if you’re not going to be subtle.
2.) Plane-Spotting! It’s the new weird hobb7y. Wait for the movie!
3.) Sociologist doing experiment on people in the park (you) to see how they react to this behavior.
4.) Somebody doing legit research on the real frequency of planes, in a particularly difficult way. Maybe he doesn’t want the airport or airliners to know he’s doing it, but doesn’t care that you do.
It’s not a big thing in the US, obviously. When I worked at Heathrow, there were always people (no, being honest, guys) in anoraks with binoculars and notebooks hanging around in parks - looking at planes.
I’m pretty sure security check them out - they seem pretty harmless.
I was next to an airport once, with my then three or four year old showing him the planes, and a B-52 bomber came into land. This was at Minneapolis/Saint Paul airport. It deployed it’s parachutes to stop and everything. Well, that was kind of neat, I thought. Suddenly I realize that there are cars honking. About five people were watching from their cars. When I was going to leave, some random guy was telling me how lucky I was to have had my son there, since they never land there. It was an emergency landing. More people showed up too. And they were all talking about it like it was the second coming.
There are more plane spotters than you would expect.
I like to see unusual planes, I’m still stinging from missing the sight of a SR-71 Blackbird took off over my Aunt and Uncle’s house in the daytime when I was sleeping, but systematically logging the tail number of individual airliners is something for Tedious Wankers[sup]TM[/sup]
I was driving home from work one blustery day. The clouds were thick and low over the Antelope Valley and rain was coming. In the distance as I looked west on Avenue K I saw an SR-71 flying in and out of the clouds in a northerly direction. Its afterburners were on, and the blue and yellow flame was as long as the aircraft. What a sight to see an SR-71 so low, framed against the stormy background with its burners on! All manner of interesting aircraft were common in that area, but this sight is one that stuck.
I was waterskiing near there once, whichever river that is that’s off the end of runways 30L and R. Had the planes coming right overhead. No B-52s, though.