Plane spotter: Crane spotter

Visually distinctive features of an aircraft—a plane spotter’s bread and butter—are usually explained by the aircraft’s specialized purpose. Tundra tires on bush planes and freight-haulers shaped like flying boxes are two examples. Need a better one? OK, the Space Shuttle, but if we limit our search to suborbitals, it’s hard to top the S-64 helicopter for pairing a profile with a purpose. This aircraft is the heavy-lift Erickson Air Crane, linking a lust for lugging lug large loads with the panache to place them precisely in position.