Originally Posted by
eckhard
Surely it must relate to one’s personal experiences and memories?
Absolutely but also perhaps to things you haven't experienced and wish you had... for example as someone born in 1964, I was lucky enough to experience the heyday of the earlier generation of jet transports but only the embers of the iconic piston airliners, something I wish I could have seen more of. I'd love to have been around ten or fifteen years earlier I guess... or be able to go back.
I realise that commercial aviation is infinitely safer now and yet... and yet...
(Fifty years ago I could look up and easily tell a 707 from a DC-8 or a Cv990, a 1-11 from a DC-9, a Tu-134 or an F-28, a Trident from a 727, a DC-10 from a TriStar... Maybe 20 common passenger jets, all readily identifiable at 8000'. Now it's mostly a big twin or a little twin and picking out the salient differences between makes/models is harder from down below - though as a decades long reformed actual "spotter" while not out of touch, I'm obviously well out of practice!)