Artikkeli sveitsiläisspotterista

[Juha Paulavuo 21]

Mielenkiintoinen artikkeli sveitsiläisestä spotterista (kaveri on ottanut 45 000 kuvaa koneista!!)ja konespottauksesta yleensäkin Sveitsissä ja muualla täällä. Juttu on ranskankielinen. Voin josssain vaiheessa yrittää kääntää pääkohtia ...

[Guest B757]

Käänsin sen aikani kuluks Englannniks... 

 

One jubile when one discovers a still unknown plane with the battalion!"

Insane of the plane one the spotting

With the instar of Genevois Maurice Roulin, they are thousands in edge of the tracks of the whole world to photograph all the conceivable civil aircrafts.

Cest by furrowing the track of Cointrin on board a military ambulance that Maurice Roulin, at the 21 years age, was caught of passion for the planes. We are in 1971 and the young man carries out its first course of repetition. He is fascinated by the universe which opens with him: contrary to you or me, which see on an aircraft only one plane, quickly takes conscience of the infinite variety to him which reigns in the immense aeronautical field!

 

Currently, knew it you, they are 30 000 civil aircrafts to traverse the skies of our planet. Each one of them has its own personality, each one is practically an individual in oneself, each one is single - and that is not due only to its serial number.

 

From now on and for the life, Maurice will belong to the vast brotherhood of plane the spotters , i.e. of these funny rowdy characters who, Canon or Nikon with the fist, posted with length of day at the edge of the tarmacs of planet, get busy to draw the portrait from the tapering birds and metal which takes off and lands at every moment.

Tens of thousands of stereotypes

Maurice, in trente-cinq years of plane spotting , account today more than 45 000 photographs of planes different in its table from hunting! Since the 707 of John Travolta (controlled by the actor himself) until the total one of the Harmony while passing by the hélico of George W Bush, without forgetting the A380 Airbus presented last year in Toulouse and in Le Bourget, of the hundreds of charters and low cost, of the governmental planes, others for VIP...

 

Employed with the service of finances of a large company genevoise, Maurice is not alone to pass the essence of his spare time - Saturday and Sunday - in edge of the tracks. In Geneva, one counts forty plane spotters . In Switzerland, they are hundreds, and in the world of the thousands. They know each other between them, are found in Manchester, Athens or Hô Chi Minh-City. In Cointrin, they form an owl bandages to gather in end of track, side Meyrin or Ferney side, it is according to.

 

Some planes spotters in Switzerland became famous among their pars. For example, in Geneva, the injoignable George Schweikart which has just flown away for Asia, or Guido Bühlmann (fifty years of plane spotting !) with so unattainable Basle, him, bus in perpetual displacements around the sphere. "They are unmarried! laugh Maurice, and nothing can distract them from their passion!" Other planes spotter corner with the spirit one nothing criticizes, Jean-Luc Altherr is questioned: "Sometimes, I have the impression that spotting planes it transfers with pathology..."

In the collimator of the CIA

Recently, the press gave a report on the concern that spotters planes them cause with the CIA: these fanatics who flush out planes whose ultimate wish would be to move incognito, what a intruders! to believe, as the scandalmongers susurrent it, that spotters planes them are mysteriously informed by air-traffic controllers (several belong to their large brotherhood). With their prize list would appear thus of the not announced flights, even with the straightforwardly suspect contents possibly consisting of prisoners of the American agency held in European prisons... Cyril, the son of Maurice, also plane spotter, sweeps the business of a gesture to him: "All that, it is mentality parano Americans! We are unable to know what there is inside the planes!"

 

Truth that spotting planes it - or rather the very short spotting - was born during the Second World war. "It acted, in the countries occupied by the Germans, tells Guy Princivalle, plane a spotter genevois, to mentally note all the characteristics of the trains, had and vehicles to transmit them to Resistance; often, of the kids took care of these missions." Today, this a little particular tradition of plane the spotting (one does not take photographs) remained in Great Britain: "In edge of the track, you have Mister equipped with a telescope (more effective than the binoculars) and, at its side, Madam who notes the data that her husband transmits to him." It is practically a sport.

Turn of Europe of the airports

Thanks to EasyJet, our plane spotters genevois makes sometimes descents on the airports of Nice and Malaga. In Paris, they are accustomed to placing in the hotels closest to Charles-of-Gaulle, and least expensive. At 5 hours of the chechmate ', they are upright, on the way for the track - sometimes they return to the hotel for the breakfast on the blow of 9, 10 hours -, then they remain at the post until fallen the night. It does not appear to with it, but it is a sport of endurance. Ah, long waitings! aggravating delays... With less than it is not, as in Heathrow or Amsterdam, a swirl, an uninterrupted flow of landings and takeoffs!...

 

Always upright, spotter planes it faces the cold, snow, the sun, the heat wave, the gust of wind, the storm, and is equipped consequently. In general, its face comes out from all this bad weather as reddened, burned and marked as that of Mike Horn after six months of forwarding. Maurice: "I remember an English in small shoes of city, in Cointrin! Tiny room to the state of ice floe, it swivelled each time on itself as soon as a plane approached, took its stereotype, then took again its initial position, back with the north wind!"

 

Here and there, it happens that the police force is interfered: recently two planes Dutch spotters made a short stay in prison, in Greece, to have faced prohibitions and to have crossed barriers. Maurice remembers to be carefully controlled in Asia by cops intrigued by his funny of pastime.

 

The pleasure, for plane a spotter , it is when it never flushes out a plane considering, unknown with the battalion. Because the world of aviation is full with misleading appearances, traps, in mobility perpetual, mobile, changing, fluctuating, imperceptible. A plane can in hiding another: six months later, it reappears under other colors, under another mark, with a different logo. "That is expensive to repaint a whole plane, therefore, when a company rents a plane during a few months, it is often satisfied to mark it only in a temporary way, by a detail on the fuselage or the tail. One calls that of the hybrids ." Companies are born, disappear, sometimes very quickly. "Catran, which had only one repurchased Mandelevium-11 with Swiss, even never took off." The eye of plane the spotter , of course, is not let take with any of these sets of illusions.

 

It makes fall the masks. Its bible is the JP Airlines Fleets International . All the planes of the world are indexed there, one by one, with the detail of their characteristics. Not less than 6100 companies, 30 000 civil aircrafts. And as the publication of this bible is only annual, planes it spotter consults meanwhile the international reviews which make the necessary updates to the wire of the months: World Airline Fleets News , Skyliner (preferred of Maurice), Airliner World , Airports of the World and Jetstream ...

Multi-coloured supports of pub

For a few years, a new element has come to contribute to the jubilation of plane the spotter : more and more, the planes are covered with pubs! The 737-400 of Alaska Airlines is daubed like a gigantic salmon. Several 747 of Nipponese All are decorated with Pokémon. All that for the greatest joy of the amateurs, who do not finish any finding themselves vis-a-vis the unexpected one.

 

Often, one is plane spotter of wire father. Cyril, the son of Maurice, was contaminated as of its youth, in its poussette. At 16 years, it charged the luggage at Jet Aviation. Today, it directs the planes on the tarmac of Cointrin. Martha, the grand-daughter of Maurice, who is only 3 years old, promises much in this primarily male universe. When it evokes this "plane spottrice" bleaches on grass some, the man has of them the eyes which shine: "Hardly started it to speak that it pronounced already the name of the Alitalia company into mumbling biyaya . And today, it recognizes with the noise of the engines the 777 when they take off over the roofs of Sliding gauge, it approaches the window immediately."

 

Let us go Mesdames, and if you take seed of it?

 

Jean-François Duval/Photos George Will pull up