Spotting (Part 1)

Fellow @weeklyblogclub member Louise once said to me that she would be interested in reading an article about why I go spotting aircraft, train, bus, tram etc and I’ve been thinking long and hard about this. I thought I’d start off with a brief introduction as to how I came to take part in all these hobbies.


It started in Junior school, Roy who was my best mate at the time told me that he went out to our local airport to spot planes every Saturday and he asked me if I would like to go out with him. I got permission from my mum and the following Saturday we headed across the fields to the airport. On arrival he told me that civil aircraft have registrations painted on them (military aircraft have serials) and the object of the hobby was to see as many different aircraft as possible. Pocket money was saved up to buy a book called Civil Aircraft Markings. This listed all aircraft on the British and Irish civil aircraft register. Plus listings of foreign airliners that came to the UK. I started ticking off all those that I saw. Whilst the Civil Aircraft Markings and it’s sister publication Miltary Aircraft Markings books are still published. I have computerised my sightings in a piece of software Aircraft Spotters software called Aerodata for which I pay £8.25 to receive updates for at regular intervals. Thanks to this software I can tell you that I have so far logged over 35,000 aircraft registrations.

During the early days I went on trips with other local aircraft spotters to far flung destinations such as Heathrow and Yeovilton. My friends at the time also collected numbers of other things whilst on route, some collected BMW car registrations (they were quite rare back in those days), some collected all car registrations that just contained a one in them (e.g. EL1 etc). I wanted something like this but different. Also I needed one fundamental thing. To have a list that I can check off. So I knew how well I was doing. I’m sure there is some physiological reason why I need a list but I do.

My list came in the form of a book. Buses of South East England by A M Witton. It listed buses own by the major bus companies. Buying that book lead me to start bus spotting. The actual collecting of bus numbers ceased when I was in my very late teens but I still like to photograph them. Which is strange as this is one area that I do deviate from my need for lists. Whilst I maintain my own on-line list of bus fleet lists of operators that I have an interest in. I don’t have complete lists of every bus and coach but do take photos of all that I can, both British and those from abroad.

Whilst I was in secondary school I was chatting to another friend about spotting who said that if he did any form of spotting then it would be trains. So we both agreed to start train spotting.

Going back to the need of lists. The train spotting books at the time only listed diesel and electric trains, not steam. Hence I’ve never collected steam train numbers, Again I photograph them when I see them, but never go out of my way to see them. I’m in the process of building a model railway and I read somewhere that people often model scenes from their childhood and this is certainly the case for me. My layout is set in the 1980’s and features British Rail Blue throughout

So that’s why I started. In future blogs Ill answer questions like. What exacyly is spotting? Does it take up all your life? How sad do you think it is? Ill also be talking about the plus side of the hobbies and some of the negative.



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