Planespotters

The picnic area at Imperial Hill rises above the south side of Los Angeles International Airport. A few passersby sip coffee from a doughnut shop a block away, but the majority of the people here—about eight of them—are leaning on a rail, aiming cameras at a pair of active runways 200 yards distant. As a windowless 747 lumbers into the air, someone calls: "There's a KLM cargo." Shutters click. Two minutes later, the process repeats with another plane and a new identification.

For the past couple of years, Billy Yeung has been coming here two or three days a week. A software architect in his early 30s, he usually spends a few hours methodically scanning and shooting. I ask him what equipment he uses, and he's about to answer when he swivels: There's something interesting on the tarmac. From cabin door to tail, the plane looks like an ordinary passenger jet. But its nose juts sharply forward, conveying less Boeing or Airbus than great blue heron.

"That's Voodoo One," Yeung says. He shoots, talks, then shoots again. Raytheon, the defense contractor, has offices next to the airport. The modified Boeing 727 has sensors hidden in the elongated forward cone; it is the company's private test unit.

I think the plane is cool-looking, but Yeung is blasé. He's shot the aircraft before. What he's really after is a Qatar Airways A340 that arrived a few days ago and has been tucked behind a hangar at the airport ever since. The presence of the craft is peculiar. The Middle Eastern flag carrier has announced first-time service to the United States, but only to New York City, and flights aren't due to start for another two months. That makes seeing the airliner a prize, for both the small crowd here at Imperial Hill and for the global community of like-minded enthusiasts who call themselves planespotters.

Wherever there's a picnic area, parking lot or berm with a clear view of an airstrip, chances are someone's standing there with a camera pointed in its direction. As long as local police accept them as quirky hobbyists, not potential terrorists, planespotters are free to haunt aviation centers, from tiny outposts in Alaska to the huge British hub in Manchester. Los Angeles's LAX, the world's fifth busiest passenger airport, is a hot locale. About 100 observers frequent it, as well as airports in Long Beach, Burbank, Orange County and Ontario, Calif.

Though the origins of planespotting are murky, most people agree that it began with Britain's Royal Observer Corps, which trained civilians to identify and report aircraft during World War II. Like trainspotters, who avidly track the movements of train engines and other rolling stock, planespotters these days collect and trade observations with thousands of their peers. They also share the traits of an even larger and arguably more zealous community: bird-watchers. My father is a "Big Lister" in the vernacular of birders, meaning he's seen more than 7000 of the world's 9500 or so avian species. Over his lifetime he's meticulously recorded every one, crossing the globe in the pursuit of rare finds. When I met my first planespotter, I felt an immediate flash of recognition.

Maybe it's in my genes, but I've got a bit of the spotting bug myself. My job puts me on the road six months a year, and finding a way to pass the time in departure lounges and cramped cabins can be a challenge. I've watched planes take off from the observation deck at Tokyo's Haneda and peeked at military jets aligned on a far runway in Caracas, Venezuela. On one trip to Mexico, I reached into the seat-back pocket of a freshly painted Aero California plane and pulled out an airsickness bag with a Continental Airlines logo. I asked the flight attendant about it. She shrugged. Maybe it was a mix-up in provisioning. Though I didn't realize it at the time, I had encountered the kind of mystery planespotters love.

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/air_space/4261265.html