U2 just gone over my house at less than 1000ft at a guess, obviously heading into Fairford. Excuse the iPhone pic!

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....fe87c3b31d.jpg

Indeed they were - incl a shooting in a row over a duff transmiiter. Radio City? Was in the era of the Krays et al. Screaming Lord Sutch had sold it by then.

This morning, a USAF E8, 95-0121, call sign PEACH75, flew just north of my place, sticking resolutely at 29,000ft. Talk about old? This one is from 1968! It wasn't close enough for me to see if it was in a wheelchair!

RAF RC-135W ZZ666 is on its way across the North Sea - formerly 64-14830 - a mere 57 years old... Can't see any KC-135s up at the mo but certainly some of them are 60+ as mentioned before.

I see the E-8 was with Pan Am then Kuwait Airways as 9K-ACS...

Regarding the age of the various "135" aircraft brings to mind Triggers words about "still got my original brush" and how many handles and heads that have been replaced during its life. The number of deep hangar checks/overhauls must be in similar numbers. Apologies for slight thread drift.

Hawker Hunter airborne out of Leeming again today, just flown over Spadeadam, now over the border (testing the Scottish Airforce reaction time :confused:) and back towards Spadeadam.

Basic structure on the 135s must be pretty original barring any damage/corrosion repairs; all the remaining aircraft have had replacement engines of course and doubtless systems and so on...

Do you mean how long it takes them to exclaim "Goodness gracious me, look, a Hunter!"

No how long it takes to scramble the City of Glasgow Aux Airforce squadron Spitfires to intercept it :E

A lovely Ruby Star AN-12 just went loudly over London, out of BHX heading SE perhaps towards Bratislava.

Putting the washing out, nice to be serenaded by the basso profondo of an AN-12! EW-484TI, out of Birminham...

Pipped, quite literally, at the post!

Regarding C-135's , there have been a couple based at Mildenhall recently with 57- and 58- serials that must be some of the oldest around. I'm surprised that there are still 707/C-135 variants in the US forces still flying with the old engines, such as the E-8 mentioned earlier. I suppose that they have enough spares for a few years more and the old adage "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" probably holds true!

Looks like a Red Arrows Hawk has just done an overflight of Dunsfold and is about to do likewise at Gatwick...

XX327. Flight Tracker shows it with Red Arrows, FR24 as a black-painted Centre for Aviation Medicine aircraft from Boscombe -seems to have comes from the Boscombe direction and heading back that way.

Not seen it, but 747SP N747NA (NASA) is based at Cologne for a few weeks.

I thought that all the remaining RC-/KC-135s had long since been re-engined with the F108/CFM56 ?

Saw that on a tracker last night. It flew out over the Atlantic for its mission......

I'm sure you're correct, the re-engining programme has been going on for years and everything has an end! I was thinking of the Open Skies aircraft , Weather variants and the E8's , plus the Israeli 707 tanker/elint aircrafts. It must only have been 5 years ago that I was chatting to the crew of a USAF RC-135 and their friendly demeanour changed when I brought up the subject of powerplants and why their steed hadn't got the CFM56's.

As far as I'm aware, all the remaining C-135s including the RC-135s have CFM56s upgraded from J57s or TF33s (JT-3D) in the 1980/90s. The E-8s have JT-8Ds upgraded from JT-3Ds.

I'm not so sure how far that plan has progressed. Certainly some JSTARS appear to be still flying around with JT3Ds:

https://www.airplane-pictures.net/ph...c-joint-stars/

Though at least one has definitely had the upgrade:

https://photofinder.tdbtools.com/pho...fb-5-sept-2013

I'd be very happy to hear a JT-3D E-8 sailing over at low level :). I did actually see an E-6 pass over here at 30000+ last year but I see they have CFM56s.