23MU would have been on the go back then too.
Edit:- I remember when I was very young, my grandad complaining that "back in the day" one could recognise who had made a car by the design of the grille/bumper/tail. He thought all the modern cars looked the same and they didn't interest him.
I feel the same about the civvy side of aviation today, more or less. A31x/32x and B73x are 99% of the traffic to our wee bit of the world. I'd as soon go and spot proper buses as opposed to Airbuses.
The military side is also pretty quiet, although in truth we probably have more fast visitors than we did for most of my actual spotting "career".
There's just so little to see/do/hear compared with "when I were a lad".