I’ve wondered in the past why plane spotting is a hobby, it’s not any different from Bus spotting, Train spotting or collecting car registrations for that matter. Is it just the interest in aviation that makes it different, or the fact that as a plane spotter you can see aircraft from all over the world at the local airfield.

When I lived in Skye the majority of the civil visitors were foreign registered, whereas all the military that I saw was either US or UK armed forces. The civil stuff came from the US, Switzerland, France, Germany, Bermuda, Denmark and a number of other locations.

The two local airfields, Ashaig (Also called Broadford) and Plockton were never that busy. With 15 aircraft being the largest number that I ever managed to catch on the ground back in 2000, although not in Skye for much of the time it was always interesting to go for a drive by.

One of the things I liked about these airfields was the fact that there was no way of knowing what would be there (If anything) when you went, sometimes the RAF arrived for lunch and sometimes the Navy. But more often than not, there was nothing there – if you timed it right you got to have a chat with the pilot – maybe even recommending somewhere for lunch. Time it wrong and you could sit and talk to yourself, a well known plane spotter trait.

During the exercises like Joint Warrior the place sometimes got a bit busy, but it wasn’t a guarantee – but then what is in the spotting world.

So the Samaritans Purse DC-8 paid an other visit to Prestwick, this time there was the oportunity to get down to and capture a few photographs. It’s nice to see that there are still a few of these around, but it seems that we are now down into single figures.

Below is a short list of the ones that are believed to be still flying, but the list hasn’t changed for quite some time and given the age of the aircraft it could be in need of an update.

9T-TCN 45753/223 DC-8-55(F) Congo Kinshasa Air Force, DRC
9Q-CJL 45909/307 DC-8-62F Trans Air Cargo Services, Kinshasa, DRC
OB-2059-P 45990/375 DC-8-73CF Skybus Jet Cargo
TT-DFJ 45991/380 DC-8-73AF CFS Air Cargo, N’Djamena, Chad
N782SP 46013/427 DC-8-72CF Samaritans Purse, Greensboro, NC
N817NA 46082/458 DC-8-72 NASA Airborne Science Laboratory, Edwards AFB, CA
9S-AJG 46110/487 DC-8-62F Transair Cargo Services, Brazzaville, Congo
9G-AXA 46113/521 DC-8-63AF Meridian Airways, Cameroon
9S-SJO 46133/534 DC-8-73CF Transair Cargo Services, Kinshasa, DRC

This as someone said could be our last chance to see one of these flying, so it was nice to get a small nostalgia fix. This DC-8 has been through Prestwick a number of times over the last year or so, I’ve been down to see it a couple of times before – but it’s always been pretty poor light due to the arrival time of the aircraft. So at long last I have a half decent (by my standards) snap of it, that will do nicely.