They have their own bus stops and food trucks – and they’re nearly all men. How planespotting became cool

Iam out spotting plane spotters on a clear Sunday morning in Melbourne, when I luck upon one of the rarer subspecies at the edge of Operations Road on the southern perimeter of Tullamarine Airport.My first spotter of the day is a Bloke on a Ladder. As I approach, he balances close to the top of his retractable stepladder, holding a camera with a huge lens, and pointing it at a Delta A350-900 Airbus taking off from runway 34. I know the make and model of the aircraft because, like Bloke on the Ladder, I’m tracking Delta’s Melbourne-Los Angeles service on the Flightradar24 app, which traces live plane movements throughout the world, mainly using radio signals broadcast from cockpit transponders.At the same time, both the Bloke on the Ladder and I are using the Live ATC website to listen to Air Traffic Control crackling in and out and offering its familiar benediction to the pilot: “Clear for take-off …” Employing the two sites and his eight-rung ladder, the spotter can build a full picture of the arc of the Airbus and gauge exactly at what point he should snap his photo.Plane spotting has moved on since my youth, when hobbyists used to carry only a pair of binoculars, a handbook and a pen, and underline aircraft registration numbers as the jets flew overhead. Today, in Melbourne in Sydney, entire infrastructures have built up around the spotters, including designated bus stops, a memorial mound and the largest food truck I have ever seen.Plane spotters are a helpful bunch. When the Airbus has passed, the Bloke climbs down from his Ladder and introduces himself as Kevin Alexopoulos, a genial logistics officer at LaTrobe University who seems entirely unsurprised to be waylaid by an interviewer. He tells me that his ladder gives him clearance over the fence around the runway. In the past, he used to be able to position his lens behind a “tiny hole” right up against the fence. These days, however, airside safety patrol cars perform regular sweeps of the perimeter and security guards direct spotters to move two to three metres from the boundary.Plane spotters know the make and model of the aircraft they see - such as this A350 - through their own expertise and often thanks to the Flightradar24 app, which traces live plane movements throughout the world, mainly using radio signals