It is always a nostalgia trip looking through old photographs of your friends, the photograph that captures an instant in time where you are all together. These are quite rare beasts in the plane spotting world, as when you hit the show it was as if the convoy had been ordered to scatter and the photo op was gone.
What has become more apparent over recent years is the lack of younger people coming into plane spotting, I’m sure it is probably the same with other variations like train or bus spotting – but I see it from the plane spotting side.
I’m note sure how we would or if we could get young people to engage in the hobby, the traditional routes into the hobby like the A.T.C. and the R.O.C. have all but gone.
Young people have a much more technological bent and seem to be quite focues on instant gratification, plane spotting has seen an increasing focus on technology. But the underlying intrest in the aircraft information and detail doesn’t seem to engender the fascination that it once did, with the improvements in technology the predominant focus of plane spotters seems to be photography.
It could be that there are lots of young people in the hobby and I just don’t see them, but whenever I go to the favoured spotting places I’d say that around 80% of the spotters are 60 years old plus – even online places seem to be full of old codgers like me.
I’d ask where are all the young spotters, have events since 9/11 just made the hobby too much trouble for the younger spotter – or are young people just not interested anymore?