Jargon and Banter

As with most hobbies, a range of shorthand terms and jargon has evolved to reflect the intricacies of the activity. There are obviously nicknames for different types of aircraft and some of these have origins in the armed forces or the aviation industry. Some of the abbreviations are drawn straight from the language used for the serious purposes of air traffic control. This includes the phonetic alphabet - Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc, which reduces ambiguity in spoken messages.

The more common slang or shorthand expressions include:

Bins - a shorthand term for binoculars.

Clearing a drome - the logging of all aircraft at a particular airfield or airport, 'drome' being a contraction of the somewhat dated word 'aerodrome'.

Copping an aircraft (number) - seeing an aircraft for the first time.

Fleeting - having seen all of a particular aircraft type thought to be operated by a named airline.

Fudging an aircraft (number) - counting it as a sighting even though the aircraft had not been seen with any reasonable degree of certainty (this is considered to be a form of cheating).

Graphing an aircraft - shorthand for taking its photograph.

Logging an aircraft - the recording of its presence at a stated place, and often at a certain time. It will often be necessary to log an aircraft when only some details surrounding it are known to the observer, that log entry will then act as a reminder when communicating with other spotters or reading magazines related to the hobby. The spotter's log is effectively a diary of interesting sightings.

Poling-off - reading an aircraft's registration or serial through the use of a telescope, or 'pole'.

Pond-hopper - UK term meaning an aircraft crossing the Atlantic Ocean.

Wrecks and relics - a term made popular by encyclopaedias showing where withdrawn aircraft might be seen. These are aircraft generally classed as unlikely to fly again. Some airframes may be used to train engineering students or service personnel who might need to repair a military plane suffering battle damage. Some are simply dumped, effectively scrapped, or stored as a source of spare parts. Some are museum exhibits or will become museum exhibits at some future date. At what stage a withdrawn, crashed or severed aircraft becomes 'un-spottable' is a moot point.