Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Aircraft/Archive 22

Chemistry spelling or local spelling on aerospace articles

See here. --John (talk) 22:21, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Question about an aircraft

XFL Airabonita. Note the title of the article and the lead sentence. What is the proper name? Bell FL Airabonita is a redlink. Perhaps this should redirect there? The other way around? Enigma ^message 01:54, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it does look wrong but that is the convention here. See:Wikipedia:WikiProject Aircraft/Naming Assuming that 'XFL' was a designation then the article title is correct, I would not have a problem calling it the Bell XFL Airabonita in the lead but others might. The article naming is important for project management. You can create a redirect page with other variations of the name. Hope that helps Nimbus (talk) 02:05, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I see now that the lead does not match the title, that can be fixed by yourself if you like. Also needs adding to the Bell aircraft navbox. Happy Wikiing! Nimbus (talk) 02:15, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

The navbox is already there and has been for a while. I fixed it for consistency with the article title, but I don't know if that's the actual correct name or not. Enigma ^message 03:14, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I created four redirect pages for most possible search parameters for this article. That should help people find it and alleviate concerns about the current nomenclature. - Ahunt (talk) 11:04, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

SmackBot problems

SmackBot has been removing the line spaces within the {{aircraft specifications}} and {{aircontent}} templates. The Specs template in particular is very long, and the Aircontent one can be, and the line spaces help aid in spotting the correct group of fields quickly, especially to those whose eyes are no longer 20/20. (And my vision cannot be corrected to 20/20.) The {{aircontent}} instructions recommend spaces between the fields. There may be an MOS guideline somewhere that says to remove them, but I haven't found it yet. Is there anyway we can have this removal stopped? I've asked on both the Bot and its owner's talk pages, but I've been ignored completely, and the removal has continued. (This is even more troubling since its owner is an admin.) Any help with this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. - BillCJ (talk) 17:20, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I've not found anything specific about having or omitting extra blank lines in MoS in cases like templates. It does say 1 or 2 spaces after a sentence are both OK. The MoS section header part says spaces between text and equals like == Header == or not are both OK too. It also says there should be a blank line before each section label. This probably does not help. So take it for whatever it's worth... -Fnlayson (talk) 04:19, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

It looks like some adjustments have been made to the SmackBot, per this diff. Thanks. - BillCJ (talk) 10:21, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Linkspammer

Such as here, added by User talk:Ospreypublishing. I think I've seen these links added before, but I'm not certain. - BillCJ (talk) 11:13, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Looks like that user is in the Advertising dept. at Osprey. ;) -Fnlayson (talk) 12:06, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Somebody else has blocked him/her for a week. MilborneOne (talk) 12:15, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Ruddervators

A new article, Ruddervators, was created today. I can't see it ever being more than a stub. Should we merge it to V-tail, or try to improve it? At the least, it needs to be moved to a singular title. Note that the singular, Ruddervator, was deleted in Sept 07, and redirected to V-tail, hence I can't move the plural title there anyway! - BillCJ (talk) 10:01, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

It seems silly to have Ruddervator redirect to V-tail while Ruddervators is a stub article. I agree that this is a small article that has very little opportunity to grow much bigger. It is also unsourced. It is really a subject that belongs as part of the V-tail page. I have moved all the text to V-tail, tagged the section as "unref" and changed Ruddervators into a redirect to V-tail instead. See what you think. - Ahunt (talk) 11:33, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree. I'm still not sure all of the other "-vators" and "-vons" should have been made stand-alone articles as opposed to being in flight control surfaces. Askari Mark (Talk) 19:35, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Having a look at a few articles like Elevon and Spoileron (which are both unsourced stubs) and Flaperon which at least has a ref, I don't think these articles are going to get beyond stub size. I agree they should be merged into flight control surfaces - Ahunt (talk) 19:45, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Canard (aeronautics) is really just a stub too. It does have some references though. -Fnlayson (talk) 13:30, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

That article was a lot longer [1] at one point but it quite rightly got chopped down due to lack of refs. - Ahunt (talk) 14:17, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Campaign to change all wikautodate linking

Although I really don't care what style is used for dates in Wiki articles and since there is a recent revision to MoS to indicate that autodating is optional, I am still quite perplexed that at least one editor, see:[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Colonies_Chris] is engaged in wholesale changes to "his liking" in not only dates but in other wikilinks. Whattodo? FWiW Bzuk (talk) 19:07, 2 August 2008 (UTC).

I am with him on this. There is the Lightbot that has also been going though all the aircraft articles also removing date links. I always found them misleading. You see a statement in an article, perhaps indicating an aircraft's first flight was on such and such a date and the date is blue linked. You click on the date expecting to see further information and instead are taken to a page that lists some very general things that happened on that date, almost always not including the item that you were looking for more information on. I have never talked to anyone yet who has set the date preferences, which is the supposed reason for the date linking - it seems very few people care enough to set that up. As explained in MOS I count linked dates as "Low added-value items are linked without reason". - Ahunt (talk) 19:32, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

See the following discussion: [2] and note: "Just to be clear, see the top of WP:MOSNUM. You'll note what it says about it being a guideline (as opposed to a policy). The means it's advisory, and so is optional." FWiW, on "new" articles that I am editing, see Empire of the Sun (film) and Swing Vote (2008 film), i have completely discarded autowikilinked dates, but I do not feel it is productive to go around changing countless other articles as I would rather be contributing by writing articles. Bzuk (talk) 19:33, 2 August 2008 (UTC).

Hi Bill, I guess that is why people have written bots to do it! - Ahunt (talk) 20:09, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

My personal view - the more linking the better! Mark Sublette (talk) 21:20, 2 August 2008 (UTC)Mark SubletteMark Sublette (talk) 21:20, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Are you sure? --Rlandmann (talk) 23:38, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Wel-l-l-l... I THINK so. Is Ah wrong? Mark Sublette (talk) 06:18, 3 August 2008 (UTC)Mark SubletteMark Sublette (talk) 06:18, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

Mark, Rlandmann asked me to comment here. There are compelling reasons to embrace the notion of disciplined linking on a wiki. High-value links—those we seriously would like our readers to consider visiting—are served best if they're not in a sea of blue, or even just cluttered by the presence of unnecessary links. Dates, I'm afraid, are in the low-value (even useless) category, because they link to generalist articles that might be OK for diversionary browsing, but do not add significantly to readers' understanding of the topic at hand.

But in any case, date autoformatting (DA) is fundamentally different from linking, even though, unfortunately, it uses the same mark-up and turns dates bright blue. It's now widely recognised that in ?2003, WPians were not at the stage of properly assessing the relative advantages and disadvantages of this programmer's concoction, and it has since spread like leprosy. The key point is that there's no real problem in the first place: who cares which comes first—day or month, month or day—both are readily comprehensible (like traveling/travelling, color/colour). And it's not entirely a transatlantic issue, since the US military and many Canadians use the international format. DA causes colour-clutter and extra work for editors, and is often wrongly marked up (trust me, I've surveyed a lot of them). DA hides from us, the very people who need to know, the inconsistencies in formatting within articles, and (less often) the wrong choice of format in whole articles. I advise all serious editors to select "no preference" so they can pick up glitches in the underlying format: this is what our readers see!

I'm pleased to discuss this further, but have not watchlisted this page. There are moves afoot at MOSNUM talk to actively discourage the use of DA: not surprisingly, I commend this move. Tony (talk) 01:23, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

After some interaction on the forums dealing with this change, I have "firmed" up my opinion to side with those who do not see an advantage to wholesale autodate wikilinking, although I certainly would like to see the year in aviation continue to be used in at least the infobox. FWiW, comments? Bzuk (talk) 01:42, 19 August 2008 (UTC).

So "optional" now means we can't use DA anywhere? As a "serious editor", I use the Edit screen to look for date inconsistanices. It's actually pretty easy to do! Anyway, I'll keep using DA until "they pry it from my cold dead fingers!" - BillCJ (talk) 02:13, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

The consensus seems to be pretty strong for deprecating – which is not the same as forbidding – their use. As for "year in aviation", that's a piped link and is not being recommended for deprecation. In fact, getting rid of DA will once more enable "year in XXX" piped linking; the chief reason editors stopped making them is that you couldn't use both the DA and piped links together and DA was deemed far more important for consistency's sake at review time. Askari Mark (Talk) 03:11, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Mark, I understand your point about deprecating, but in practice, these guys are treating it as if it's already forbidden - ask them when it's OK to use date autoformattings, and I doubt you'll get a straight answer. User:Colonies Chris has been making wholesale deletions of all date linkings on various articles, without even considering if some would be useful in certain cases. I also object to the entire way this "guideline" change has been implemented, with a lot of bullying and insults being used towoards anyone who might object to the removal of DA functions. I also believe there are other options besides wholesale de-linking that have not even been considered. My attempts to even raise these at the MOSNUM talk page were met with the same bullying and nasty insults, including by Greenlink-color-clutter-Tony from above. I don't see how people with a true majority have to act that way, and that's partly why I don't believe that there is one. Finally, I have seen several edit wars of which date formats to use since I joined WP 2 years ago, and I believe there will be a lot more because of this de-linking. Most of the editors who have known me all this time know I can fight tooth and nail for my opinions/beliefs/preference, but in the end, I'll still support a clear consensus. We are not there yet, so I will keep fighting the bully-boys and their disgusting tactics until it's really over. - BillCJ (talk) 03:49, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree, Bill. The whole issue of mass removal is a separate, albeit closely related, issue and anyone supporting deprecation would quickly find there’s no consensus for their elimination. I really think the whole issue could be put to rest if the developers were to implement a date format option that everyone could use, without the need for DA. I’m no coder, but I’ve yet to hear anyone assert that it cannot be done.

One of the general problems with the MOS pages is that they attract “hardcore” wonks; unfortunately, the internecine scorched-earth ISO global thermonuclear war has engendered a particular, um, shall we say “style” that’s more invective than a good-faith working out of a broadly acceptable compromise. It’s counter-constructive in that those harangues discourage contributions of fresh insights by those outside the coterie of “the usual suspects”. Because of that, and because it influences so many articles, I believe it will need a broader community consensus at the VP for mass removal. I have little doubt it will come to that, given the nature of the way things work in Wikipedia. As you’ll have noted in the MOSDATE thread, anytime someone (like Tony) has done a surprise mass removal or recommended mass removal, there have been contrary voices piping up. Discouraging further use of DA is one thing, but mass removal is another, as many Wikipedians resist having options taken from them of – much less having a large part of their work undone without prior notice. As was shown with the WP:ATT debacle, the wonks ignore the broader community at the risk of having their hard work undone. Askari Mark (Talk) 04:14, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Mark, thanks for responding to my "rant" with a well-reasoned response. One of the suggestions I brought up was making date linking work for everyone, and/or possibly changing the date autoformat color form blue to something esle, such as green. This is what I meant when I said all options had not been considered. Like you, I don't know what is workable, but a default date setting should possible, just liek the default 180px setting for images (too low, in my opinion, but that's another issue!) And yes, I remember the WP:ATT debacle! I thought it was a good policy, but I do understand the objections to how it got to be policy. The Rollbacks option was another good idea that was slipped in sideways (by the well-meaning software side), but at least it was kept! - BillCJ (talk) 04:27, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

I wondered whether Lightbot could be enable-able on a per-WikiProject basis, so I asked here. There I also noted that the bot's approval requests do not explicitly allow it to remove full date links. Single years and date fragments, yes. If it is removing autolinking then maybe its regexp mechanism needs attention? FWIW, an admin has currently stopped the bot. -84user (talk) 08:12, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Re full dates: Lightbot does not remove valid autoformatting of full dates. However, it will remove autoformatting from invalid dates such as ranges '12 to 19 April'. Such errors are difficult for humans to detect but easy for bots and are more common than you might think. Lightmouse (talk) 09:24, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

In checking MOS:SYL it seems that date-linking is now considered deprecated, which is defined as "superseded and should be avoided". - Ahunt (talk) 11:29, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Avro Vulcan XM655 - individually notable?

Is this particular Vulcan notable enough for a separate article? --Rlandmann (talk) 21:13, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I dont think so it doesnt appear to have been notable in service (outside chance if it had been one of the Black Buck aircraft) just that it had survived in one piece, also see Vulcan Restoration Trust which is really an article about Vulcan XL426. Only XH558 is notable due to the long and very public campaign to get her flying again. The other two are fine with just a mention on the Avro Vulcan page. MilborneOne (talk) 21:27, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Requested template and category

I wonder if someone could create a template for aircraft engines without (or missing) specifications based on {{aero-specs}} probably and a category 'Aircraft engines without specifications' to go with it. I looked at doing it but the coding was too much!! I posted this on the template page but had no reply, excuse me for cross posting. I hope that this is a good idea, it would help me greatly as I am trying to improve the engine articles slowly. Many thanks. Nimbus (talk) 18:08, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

I have created a basic {{Aeroengine-specs}} template and a category Category:Aircraft engines without specifications to go with it. I have only tagged a couple of articles to check that it works and have not included the template or category in the project yet. If this is ok then I would appreciate it if someone could add this to the relevant sub-categories. Fingers crossed for approval! Cheers Nimbus (talk) 16:42, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Fajr Aviation & Composites Industry

This looks like an advert to me, creator's only contribs are related to this article. Just going through some of the unassessed articles. Nimbus (talk) 12:12, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Certainly is! AfD candidate unless rewritten from a NPOV IMHO. --Red Sunset 20:03, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Actually, it's a copyvio; I'm going to speedy it as such. Askari Mark (Talk) 20:10, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Great, I'm too technically inept to sort it out. The phrase 'our blah-di-blah' raised my eyebrows! Nimbus (talk) 21:21, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, the threat of its being deleted attracted the attention of the main editor who has now further developed the article. Still needs work, but it's less problematical and not a copyvio anymore. Askari Mark (Talk) 02:06, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Template:Avyear

Now that date linking has been deprecated (See:MOS:UNLINKDATES), and people are combing through articles removing the links to days and year,[3] is now the time to push Template:Avyear into standard use? How about changing {{Infobox Aircraft}} so that if someone entered |first flight =10 May 1972 the Template would autoformat it to 10 May 1910. Should this template be used throughout the page or (I believe) just in the infobox? - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 14:36, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I think that avyear should only be used in the infobox and should just be used to link the first flight year to the related aviation in year article. MilborneOne (talk) 16:48, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that seems to be the case so far with articles using it. And I think now it would be best to not edit the infobox, but the articles themselves. This is a good task for a bot or AWB. - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 17:02, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I concur that the "in aviation year" works well in the infobox but should not appear anywhere else as firstly, autodates are not consistent, often have no context connection in a wikilink and for the sake of simplicity, removing a date link just makes editing and reading easier, especially for the 99.9999% who are users with no date preferences set for their browsers. On a complimentary front, Lightmouse's Lighbot has already removed the in aviation links in infoboxes. I have asked him to adjust his bot's operation to allow the infobox to have a link to an aviation date list. I hope he picks up soon as his bot has already trashed gazillions of infoboxes. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 18:28, 5 September 2008 (UTC).

For now, I have stopped the bot removing 'in-aviation'. However, I wish we could have statistics on click-through rates. I would bet that links that look like solitary years are treated like solitary years. If the link is concealed/piped/camouflaged/easter-egged, then readers will probably just ignore it. Readers do not just randomly click on links in the hope that they will go somewhere other than the text implies. Have you seen the music guidelines on this at Wikipedia:MUSTARD#Internal_links and similar discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Films/Style_guidelines#Film_years? They suggest alternate methods that make it more visible and hence less likely to be ignored. The music and film projects have the same interests in this as the aviation project. You may find their comments useful to your debate here. Lightmouse (talk) 18:46, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the premise that "in aviation dates" could be eliminated in the body of the text but there is a general agreement that the years listing can be of use in a limited way, I also work in the WP:Films group and that project group also uses these date links judiciously. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 19:34, 5 September 2008 (UTC).

Indeed. Eliminating 'year-in-blah' is one issue. The other issue is making them look less like a solitary year. Please look at the suggestions for appearance enhancements. Lightmouse (talk) 19:41, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

The use of the full term "year in aviation" could eliminate the stand-alone date issue, and if only used in one specific way and location, that could also prompt the deprecation of other date linking in the body of the articles which is the general direction that is being discussed in Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers). FWiW Bzuk (talk) 20:01, 5 September 2008 (UTC).

But how would we use the full term and have it look ok:

First flight 10 May 1972 in aviation

First flight 10 May 1972 (in aviation)

First flight 10 May 19721972 in aviation

First flight 10 May 1972in aviation

First flight 10 May 1972(in aviation)

- Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 20:54, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Another thought would be to use a category instead like Category:First flown in 1972 and not use avyear. 1972 in aviation would then link from the cat. Might save some grief. MilborneOne (talk) 21:03, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

MilborneOne: I like your idea! - Ahunt (talk) 22:52, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Adding the category could probably can be done with the Av year template. If it did that you'd want to show the year in black instead of linking. -Fnlayson (talk) 14:53, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Apparently Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(links)#Dates has been changed to the following:

Avoid piping links from "year" to "year something" or "something year" (e.g., 1991) in the main prose of an article in most cases. Use an explicit cross-reference, e.g. (see 1991 in music), if it is appropriate to link a year to such an article at all. However, piped links may be useful:

• in places where compact presentation is important (some tables, infoboxes and lists);

- Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 22:25, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

This has been a losing battle for some time now. I've given up and will not be linking any more years. --Rlandmann (talk) 20:15, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Survivors series

Discussion on these articles is taking place in a couple of places - I'm centralising it here - please jump back in! --Rlandmann (talk) 05:36, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Unlinking dates

Maybe I'm the last one to find out about this, but in case there's someone more dense than I around here, I thought I'd spread the word. It's been an MOS rule of thumb to wikilink dates so that user preferences can apply to date formats (ie, so that 12 September appears as 12 September and September 12 appears as September 12, depending on how you have your prefs set).

Evidently, some folks disagree, and though it doesn't appear that a strong consensus was formed, the MOS has now been changed (see MOS:UNLINKDATES) and now we're told we are not to link dates. Sigh. AKRadecki^Speaketh 15:32, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I for one am glad to see the end of wikilinking dates; it is a tedious process and, as has been pointed out elsewhere, often means that important aviation links, or those related to aviation, or to the subject matter, end up disappearing in a sea of blue links. The more links that are highlighted the less likely people are to actually use them, especially if the link bears no relationship to the information contained in the article (my feeling also is that if something is wikilinked once in an article it does not have to be wikilinked again, unless the references are spread well apart). Minorhistorian (talk) 22:14, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Designer field in Infobox Aircraft

The instructions for the Template:Infobox Aircraft regarding the "Designer" field cleary state: Only appropriate for single designers, not project leaders. However, this instruction is not present in the infobox in most of the aircraft articles. In fact, some WP:AIR members in good standing appear to regularly add project leaders such as Ed Heinemann (sp?) to WWII and 1950s era aircraft pages. In fact, I removed a project leader from the F-16 page's infobox last week! Where this becomes a unique problem is with Soviet/Russian Design bureaus: The articles are titled after the Design bureaus, not the actual builder of the aircraft. That's fine, but some editors, typically those from the former Soviet block, are placing the Design bureaus in the Designer field, and placing the assembler in the Manufacturers field.

Bearing in mind that guidelines generally need to reflect usage, not dictate it, what should we do about these problems? Disable the design field altogether? Allow/expand it to include project leaders and/or Design bureaus? Add a separate field for Design bureaus? Or just change the guidelines to be more lenient, or even allow any of the above uses to be the norm? - BillCJ (talk) 15:47, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Provide a guideline to the effect that the field is mainly for a single individual that did the vast majority of the aircraft design. I think listing the Design bureau or similar is fine as that's a special case. It should be clear the bureau is not a single person so there won't be confusion. -Fnlayson (talk) 15:54, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I think the main problem is that the template gives the quite reasonable guideline comment <!--Only appropriate for single designers, not project leaders--> but people keep removing the comment. Then others come along and fill in whatever they like. I don't think that on a Tupolev aircraft that the designer space needs to say "Tupolev Design Bureau", it is pretty self-evident in most cases. I have been replacing the comments wherever I find they have been deleted and that seems to fix the problem in most cases. - Ahunt (talk) 16:06, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

On the same tact, would it be useful to have a separate entry for Project Leaders/Design Bureau that would accommodate the note that a significant designer/engineer/office was also involved? I am thinking of an important figure such as "Kelly" Johnson who would be a team leader but not specifically an individual designer, especially in his later career. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 17:23, 15 September 2008 (UTC).

I'll admit that I've also started using the "designer" field for Soviet design bureaux and the manufacturer field for the manufacturing plant - I think to do otherwise seriously distorts our presentation of how aircraft were produced during that era. I've also occasionally done the same for homebuilt aircraft where the "designer" is less clearly an individual than an organisation, and put "homebuilt" in the manufacturer field.

I'm more wary of project leaders, however. The danger is implying a stronger degree of "authorship" of the design to the project leader than was really the case - the infobox is a prominent spot. When the design was by an organisation other than the manufacturer/builder, there's no chance of this confusion (as Fnlayson notes). There's also the problem of knowing whether the senior or head designer of a particular company was actually the project leader for a particular aircraft in question. To avoid these minefields, I'm inclined to suggest that we continue to disallow project leaders. --Rlandmann (talk) 19:45, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I also concur with Jeff (Fnlayson) on allowing Soviet design bureaus to be used in the designer field. I do have one other, similar usage I've seen, and that is putting the licensed builder in the manf field, and the orignal manf. in the designer field. The oddest of of these I've seen was for the CH-124 Sea King, in which Sikorsky Aircraft was listed as the designer, with United Aircraft Canada as the manf. I say odd because UAC (now PW Canada) and Sikorsky are both owned United Aircraft (now United Technologies), and, AFAIK, all UAC did in this case was the assembly. I really don't have a problem with this type of usage per se, but usually we've just placed both the licenser and licensee in the manf. field with a line break. - BillCJ (talk) 22:08, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Aircraft

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 22:53, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

"Survivors" - the immediate issues

User:Andrewa has done a great job of picking out the points of contention (and I've added a fifth) - please indicate your opinions here --Rlandmann (talk) 06:08, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

RfC/U

A Request for Comment on the conduct of User:Davegnz has been opened here. Community input is invited from editors who have had interactions with him. To see how you can participate, go here --Rlandmann (talk) 01:13, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

AfD nomination of 2008 South Carolina Learjet 60 crash

An article that you have been involved in editing, 2008 South Carolina Learjet 60 crash, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2008 South Carolina Learjet 60 crash. Thank you. Do you want to opt out of receiving this notice?

• Note the Nom's explanation! - BillCJ (talk) 23:12, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

WP 0.7 clean-up

We might want to organize a clean-up on the pre-selected articles for WP 0.7. I'd also recommend taking a look at some articles that didn't make it, but should have. One example is the Sukhoi Su-30, which is rated C-class (which I thought we weren't using?), but has very little depth to it. Askari Mark (Talk) 23:52, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Company merge proposals

An editor has propsed merging several companies at Talk:Aérospatiale#Merger proposal. At issue are a set of draft guidelines from Wikipedia:Companies, corporations and economic information which recommend covering all of a companies predecessors on the same page, under the latest name. Thanks. - BillCJ (talk) 18:47, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Kaset Green Hawk

Here is a new article that could really use some serious work, if anyone has the time to have a look at it! I have my doubts about the photos included as they are all stamped for ownership on the photos themselves. - Ahunt (talk) 12:55, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

I have had an editorial run though this article, but it could really use a second and third look. - Ahunt (talk) 13:33, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Sud-Est/Sud-Ouest

A user has proposed moveing the articles on two aircraft manufacturers, Sud-Est and Sud-Ouest, to other titles, and converting the existing pages to DABs. Input from the WP:AIR community would be helpful. There are two separate but similar discussions at Talk:Sud-Est and Talk:Sud-Ouest. Note: the user has placed five to sixx DAB links on each article. - BillCJ (talk) 21:36, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

I think Bill Gunston calls them SNCASE and SNCASO, we have SNECMA which is a familiar term to us hopefully, and the Belgians had SABCA so the French speakers seem to have a convention going back many years. I disagree with the other proposal of merging these companies and others into Aerospatiale, many of us are deliberately creating or expanding articles on the smaller (but very notable) companies that were eventually merged with larger US/British companies. Seems just to be a naming problem, the DAB tags look silly, I would guess he is trying to make a point. Nimbus (talk) 22:04, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I checked Gunston's book on aircraft manf's beforehand, and thst's what it said. I think the Acronym is better than spelling out the whole name, which is what the French and German WPs do. - BillCJ (talk) 05:48, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Armstrong Siddeley Nimbus

Eee! Found an engine with my name! Would appreciate a bit of help with this article please. My fairly good reference book has no mention of this piston engine, it does mention that the ADC Aircraft ADC Nimbus was a redesign of the Siddeley Puma (which I think this is probably referring to) and I am fairly sure that it is not supposed to be the Bristol Siddeley Nimbus turboshaft. Any thoughts? Cheers Nimbus (talk) 18:14, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

The only google hits on Armstrong Siddeley Nimbus are to the wikipedia article our mirrors so I suspect this is really the ADC Nimbus. Doesnt clear up your question but I did find this on the ADC Nimbus [4]. The Bristol Siddeley Nimbus turboshaft was originally a Blackburn design so I dont think it is connected. MilborneOne (talk) 18:37, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I think this is relating to the ADC Nimbus and Siddeley Puma. Does not fit with the 'big cat' series which is apparent in the navbox. There is not much to merge, AfD? Nimbus (talk) 18:46, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

I would have thought a WP:PROD would work. MilborneOne (talk) 18:50, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Will give it a go, have not done that before, seems a reasonable course of action. Nimbus (talk) 18:55, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Now prodded. Just to add to the fun there are two more AS engines that could be covered, the Armstrong Siddeley Hyena and the Armstrong Siddeley Deerhound which appears to be a dog, not a cat! Doh! Nimbus (talk) 19:06, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

And there's the Armstrong Siddeley Boarhound, another unfeline three-row radial, although unlike the other two it appears never to have flown.Nigel Ish (talk) 19:18, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Maybe they ran out of cats! Mentioned in the index of Alec Lumsden's book and mispelt as 'Boardhound' but there is nothing in the text, he does only cover the engines that flew though. It's an educational journey anyway. Cheers Nimbus (talk) 19:24, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Deleted under CSD 8, have unlinked the section title incase you get red eyes like mine!! It's hard work plodding through these engine articles but I hope I am improving the quality. Nimbus (talk) 01:03, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Mark Daniels (Defense Consultant)

A user has added an article on Mark Daniels (Defense Consultant). Originally, it had no sources, but there is now a vague link to F16.net. Tho that is primarily a forum site, it does have other content, but without a direct link there's no way to know where the info came from. - BillCJ (talk) 05:48, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the CSD tag on it! - Ahunt (talk) 10:25, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid that I just knocked back the speedy deletion request. While I very much doubt that this person is notable, the article does make some claims of notability so it needs to go to AfD or be prodded. Nick Dowling (talk) 10:45, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I've just added the Prod template. Nick Dowling (talk) 23:06, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

P-47 Thunderbolt survivors

Please note that P-47 Thunderbolt survivors has been nominated for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/P-47 Thunderbolt survivors. MilborneOne (talk) 18:41, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't think this can be considered a good-faith nomination, as Dave is deleting this because he still thinks it's his article, it spite of being to to the contrary on many occasions. Also, it's not even been a month yet since the last AFD. Seems to be another disruption to make a point. - BillCJ (talk) 19:03, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Engine navbox?

Trawling through the engine articles I can see a common system for later US military engines, like J79 (for turboJet) etc. It would be nice to start a navbox but I have no references apart from the articles here. Any thoughts/help? Cheers Nimbus (talk) 01:17, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Just a comment. If you are grouping engines by manufacturer, their web site might be enough for this. Although some companies may just list their current engines, which won't help you. -Fnlayson (talk) 01:24, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Jeff, I just found this, no idea how accurate it is but it's something to look at tomorrow. I was thinking of a navbox for the US military designations but we do still have some major engine manufacturer navboxes missing (P&W, GE, Allison etc). I think the navboxes are great and probably a more useful tool to editors than the reader. Nimbus (talk) 01:35, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I was just about to suggest that site, Nimbus! Andreas is very good, and he usually uses DOD PD documents as his main source, but he cites other works on that page too. The page lines up with everything I've ever read on the subject of US DOD engine designations. I will look around and see if I can find a published work to reference the definitions form, just in case the wonks won't accept this site as a reliable source. - BillCJ (talk) 01:47, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) Thanks Bill, as it is just for a navbox refs should not be a problem, I saw his list of sources and it looks pretty good to me. Seems to be an awful lot of numbers to put together! What to call it? US military aircraft engine designations? Do you ever wish that you never started something!! Nimbus (talk) 01:52, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

• "US military aero engines" Aero engine may not apply to piston engines though. ?? -Fnlayson (talk) 01:57, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Thought aero engine was a British term! :-) I was only going to do the jets and turbines to start with. Nimbus (talk) 02:00, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

• I see Andreas uses 'aero engine' so can go with that. I have made a start in a sandbox here if any of you guys would like to chip in. Many of the entries have auto-completed to DAB pages and articles on tanks, trains and all sorts of other wonderful things, needs a thorough sorting before moving it to mainspace. I've stuck with turbines at the moment, it could have piston and rocket engines added later or they might be better with their own navboxes. Also need to go back over it to pull out redlinked numbers that did not exist. Great fun, cheers. Nimbus (talk) 12:43, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

The template is starting to look pretty good. As soon as we think we have all the WP articles linked to (the licencees are the tough ones to track down sometimes), I say go live with it. I noticed the title is now about gas turbines, and I think that's the way to go. THe piston engines will be pretty big, and I have a hunch the radials may need their own template too, be we'll see when we get there. Once this template's live, we'll have to add it to the engine articles, and then we'll start to see input from other editors. It's amazing to see how many editors start to chip in, and then the redlinked articles start to get written. Perhaps WP:AIR should focus on getting more templates done, as that seems to be a key factor in getting more articles written! - BillCJ (talk) 23:24, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Roger! Yep, it's nearly there, have weeded out most of the tanks and trains now. We can get things done pretty quick sometimes. Piston engines is one for a rainy day! Nimbus (talk) 23:44, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Since the designation system doesn't distinguish between turbines for different applications, I wonder whether the - Ooops! fragment of another idea that I thought better of - didn't notice it was still in my edit screen when I added material below. Sorry! --Rlandmann (talk) 00:24, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

• Who? What? Not sure what the exat question is here, but the US DOD uses the same designation for some engines in both turboprop and turboshaft applications, IIRC. Is that the question? - BillCJ (talk) 00:19, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Just picking up on BillCJ's comment above re: redlinks in templates - Trevor's already got such a list here. Careful! Slow to load! --Rlandmann (talk) 00:09, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

And on the subject of the excellent navbox - the aircraft templates retain the X- or Y- prefixes for designs that never got past that stage (reflecting the article names). Should the same apply on this engine template? --Rlandmann (talk) 00:11, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I think it should, esp if we do it on the other templates, but no need to do it all at once either. I'll work on some later this week if we decide to ad the Xs or Ys. - BillCJ (talk) 00:19, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

(Edit conflict x 2) Has now gone live, at {{USAF gas turbine engines}}. Possibly not the best title for it but it fits with the naming convention of the other templates in 'Category:United States Air Force aircraft designations navigational boxes'. I just spotted that there is a tri-service category, doh! Yes, X and Y should be highlighted, I think there are one or two in there already. Now to add it to the articles!! Nimbus (talk) 00:24, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Have added it to all the 'J's. The article designations agree with the navbox which is good, changed a couple to YJ. I thought about splitting the turboprops/turboshafts as mentioned above, it could be done by reading the articles, I think some engines were used for both applications though. Nimbus (talk) 00:58, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

TfD

Template:Monnett aircraft is up for deletion here. Your opinions welcome. --Rlandmann (talk) 20:59, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Reference sources

A while back I was "called out" by the FA people (well, person) because they considered the references in F-20 Tigershark to be unreliable. The references in question were Mark Wade and Joe Baugher, both of whom I consider to be highly reliable. In Joe's work, for instance, the only error I ever turned up was one that was in the original source (Greene).

So, what say you all? Do you consider Joe to be reliable enough to quote here?

Maury (talk) 19:43, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Actually we had this debate some time ago. While his work is excellent, the main problem is that Baugher is self-published and thus runs afoul of the Wikipedia policy at WP:SPS. - Ahunt (talk) 19:50, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't care about policy, I care about article quality. Policies are subject to change (see above), trustworthyness generally isn't. Maury (talk) 20:15, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

While sources like this are certainly high quality and trustworthy, technically as self published web-pages by people who are not published experts, they may struggle to meet the letter of WP:RS, so using them will cause problems when trying to get an article through GA or FA review. I think that a compromise could be that, where a source of Equal or better quality that meets WP:RS can be found (such as the sources that Baugher quotes in his articles, then use them. If not, then you may need to accept that the sources may be subject to challenge.Nigel Ish (talk) 20:00, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

"'While sources like this are certainly high quality and trustworthy"

If you believe this, and I'm assuming you do, then that's all I'm interested in.

If the SPS policy outlaws sources we, the experts in the field, consider "high quality and trustworthy", then the SPS needs to change.

I think it's vitally important we consider the spirit of the law. The REF system is attempting to weed out low-quality sources, that's its entire raison de etre. Most SPS's tend to be low quality. So by generally outlawing SPS's, SPS reduces the amount of bad quality refs.

But as SPS notes, not all SPS's are bad. And I think we all agree that Joe is not bad (right?). We shouldn't be removing a good source because it falls into a category that was intended to weed out bad sources.

If there is any sort of consensus here that Joe's works are trustworthy, then that absolutely overrules the SPS. This is not the first time this sort of issue has come up.

Maury (talk) 20:15, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree that the WP:SPS policy needs to be changed. The challenge in doing so is then how to judge a good quality self-published source from a poor one. - Ahunt (talk) 20:20, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

One immediate hallmark of a quality SPS is that it lists its sources, as Baugher does. --Rlandmann (talk) 20:49, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

• Agreed with Nigel. Use Baugher and Vectorsite.net pages as interim references. Replace with quality print or other sources when you can. -Fnlayson (talk) 18:47, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I think we've heard from many of the "usual suspects" on this, and the consensus does seem positive. I'll round up a few of the stragglers... Maury Markowitz (talk) 18:09, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Kawasaki YPX

Just found the Kawasaki YPX article, which was posted in July, but has absolutely no sources. Has anyone seen any reliable sources on this airliner proposal? - BillCJ (talk) 17:22, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Airliner subtemplates

We currently have a "subtemplate" field in the Template:Infobox Aircraft, which is being used for 4 airliner manufacturer templates: Template:Infobox Boeing Airliners, Template:Infobox MD Aircraft, Template:Infobox Airbus airliners, and Template:Infobox Embraer Airliners. There are other manufacturers wich could have templates, including Bomardier, the British airliners, and the Soviet/Russian types suche as Illushyin and Tupolev.

Before going ahead and creating such templates, I wanted to see if the project felt there was any real use in have these links at the taop of the page when most already have navboxes at the bottom. The subtemplates originally had the manufacturers' logos, but this was disallowed by the Fair-use wonks. I did not support these templates in the first place, and still feel they are of no real use, and redundant to the navboxes, and are mostly clutter. In fairness, there were few company navboxes in existance when these 4 subtemplates were created, but IIRC all 4 manufacturers now have them.

So, should we discontinue the use of these subtemplates, or should we expand them to cover other airliner companies? - BillCJ (talk) 17:34, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

No idea who created them but it seems to work well for the casual reader. They are 'non-standard' which perhaps you are worried about in case they set a precedent. Nimbus (talk) 17:57, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

They might have served a purpose before the widespread roll-out of navboxes; but I think they've had their day. I'd be very glad to see them go. --Rlandmann (talk) 19:39, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

RL, well said! Perhaps the Infobaox aircraft template could have a "problem" with the Subtemplate coding? ;) Nimbus, I wasn't so much worried about it setting a precedent as just having incomplete coverage of the airliner companies. I was actually starting to write a template for Bombardier when I realized we only had 4 of them, and perhaps WPAIR should consider whether or not we want to use them at all before I went and made more of them! I actually do use the templates, mostly because they are there, but for most other types I go to the bottom navboxes. It may take some getting used to for people who have been using them to bounce to other articles, but as RL siad, we how have novboxes for that. RL, besides disabling the subtemplate field, would we need to TFD the templates, assuming we decide not to use them? - BillCJ (talk) 19:58, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I also use them because they are there, like right clicking on a link to open a new tab. The subtemplates don't have to be deleted now. We could remove/disable the subtemplate field in the Infobox first. -Fnlayson (talk) 20:02, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Removing them from the infobox templates would be the logical first step. Assuming there was no outcry over it, the subtemplates would then be eligible for speedy deletion as substantial duplications of the functionality provided by the navboxes. Unless there's any dissent here, I'll make the infobox changes in the next day or two. --Rlandmann (talk) 22:45, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

OK, works for me! - BillCJ (talk) 23:09, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Prod

You may or may not be aware that I have 'Prodded' the Aircraft structures article. I thought it only fair to highlight this here in case there are strong thoughts either way. Some discussion on the talk page. The problem stems from the direction of the text. I would like to try to create a similar article (with a different title) that focuses solely on the design and construction of aircraft (not models, hang gliders or kites etc). I know this is a 'biggie' and it is possible that there is another similar/better article out there that is not being linked. Regards. Nimbus (talk) 18:12, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

FA push?

BTW, I think Joe Baugher is tops. Thanks very much for the help with the US turbine template, it works well and is a useful tool. We don't have many FA's and it occurs to me that the Rolls-Royce Merlin should be up there (currently start class, no Brit bias intended!). There is 37 kb of text at the moment and it is a bit jumbled but I am sure with a bit of work it could make it. I know this bypasses the usual process but it's worth a try. I pasted the article text into here so it could be worked on by all without edit summaries and the usual backlash with the intention of pasting it back in laterer. Am I mad? Cheers Nimbus (talk) 02:14, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Have struck some of that, I wasn't thinking straight last night, ignore me, cheers. Nimbus (talk) 19:41, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

• A drive to get some articles in shape for Good Article and Featured Article nominations is a fine idea. Due to sometimes painful formatting issues, I suggest going through the GA step before FA nomination. -Fnlayson (talk) 19:46, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

• I can understand why there are not more, I tried to get one article through GA but with hindsight it probably wasn't ready and from involvement with the Phantom FA review I got a flavour of the even higher jumps to get over.Nimbus (talk) 19:55, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Having watched at least one article savaged by the "Good Article Demons" I would rather have an article that is good, than a Good Article. - Ahunt (talk) 22:31, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Ha! Well said! :) --Rlandmann (talk) 19:04, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

It may be worth trying to get help from WP:MILHIST they seem to be rather more successfull in getting articles, including technical articles such as we have here, through the FA process.Nigel Ish (talk) 19:13, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Looking at the table [5] it does seem strange that we have over 10,000 articles in the aircraft project but only three featured ones. Is military aviation a separate project (showing 24 FA's in that column)? Maybe someone 'higher up' in WP will notice the lack of FA's and offer words of encouragement/advice. Nimbus (talk) 22:49, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

• Judging by Category:FA-Class military aviation articles, it appears Military Aviation TF covers a wider area than we do here at WP:Air. They include aircraft, accidents, companies, persons, etc. Where Air does not seem to include the persons and companies. -Fnlayson (talk) 23:08, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

What I was thinking of as comparible was articles for things like warships and tanks, whichj can be compared more directly to wp:aircraft's articles.Nigel Ish (talk) 17:26, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I, on the other hand, recommend skipping GA as a path to FA. Every time I have tried this I have found that the two groups give what could only be described as random comments. One might complain about bolding in the middle of the text, another about the formatting of a reference. In more than one case, the comments conflicted with each other. Invariably, however, the FA effort got many more eyeballs on the article, and much more focussed comments. It was not uncommon to get as few as two people commenting in the GA process, which renders it largely ineffective. I have largely given up on GA as a result. Maury Markowitz (talk) 14:44, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Interesting. I mentioned the GA as a review before going through FA review. Have you had any luck with A-class reviews on this project or others? -Fnlayson (talk) 15:14, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Battle of Britain: Aftermath; can anyone make sense of this?

Can anyone make sense of what this is trying to say?:

According to one theory, losses of aircraft and experienced aircrew in the Battle may have been a blow from which the Luftwaffe never fully recovered. Supporters of this theory argue that only 929 bombers took part in Operation Barbarossa out of 1,511 level bombers available to the Luftwaffe on 21 June 1941; this latter figure was was significantly higher (1,711) on 11 May 1940., showing a drop of 200 from May 1940ⁱ Records of bomber strengths however reveal that the decrease occurred as a result of the Battle of France: the Luftwaffe possessed 1,380 level bombers on 29 June 1940, prior to the Battle, and 1,423 level bombers on 2 November 1940, at the end of the daylight phase of the bomber offensive, which British historians traditionally identify as the end of the Battle. Just prior to Barbarossa. In a similar manner, it is also claimed that inadequate production levels in German factories also were a factor, with an average 250 single-engined and 64 twin-engined fighter aircraft produced per month during early 1941. As a result, it is claimed, that the number of German front line aircraft was declining, a problem which would not be resolved until early 1942, with a huge effort to expand production, reaching 1,200 by March/April. Conflicting reports of front line status should be noted with totals cited of 1,107 single- and 357 twin-engined fighters on strength prior to the Battle on 29 June 1940, compared to 1,440 single-engined fighters and 188 twin-engined fighters on 21 June 1941; but the existence of the new night fighter arm - which had 263 aircraft in addition - that was created from existing single-and twin-engined fighter units, should also be noted.)

This desperately needs a complete overhaul to make any sense. At the moment it is almost unreadable and seems to be trying to prove that statistics can be used to prove virtually anything. As it is the whole "Aftermath" section itself needs a complete overhaul... Minorhistorian (talk) 10:56, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

The cited refs are all paper books, which I don't have here, but depending on exactly what the refs say (I suspect they only give raw numbers and not concluded theories) this could all be WP:OR, - Ahunt (talk) 13:10, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

The entire sequence is poorly written and edited and, judging by such phrases as According to one theory, it is also claimed, it is claimed there is an interpretation being placed on two sets of figures Articles may not contain any new analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position not clearly advanced by the sources. This whole Aftermath section is full of arguments, speculation, and ideas and needs close, careful editing. Minorhistorian (talk) 21:56, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree. Without the actual books cited though it is hard to judge what to do, how to fix it or whether to just remove it all. - Ahunt (talk) 22:51, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Here is a thought: when things have been contentious on some articles I have scanned and posted quotes on the talk page from the paper refs I used just so everyone can see them. I believe this to be allowed under "fair use" as long as it is only short sections quoted. You might ask the contributors to post their reference info that way if you don't have access to it. - Ahunt (talk) 22:55, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Naming conventions - US military aircraft

During the various discussions about the "survivors series", the issue of how we name articles about US military aircraft has come up a couple of times.

A little bit of background:

Some of the major driving forces behind Wikipedia's naming conventions have been: to ensure that duplicate articles didn't get created, and to maximise the chance that a new article will already be linked to by former redlinks scattered throughout the rest of the project.

"Designation-name" was adopted back in 2003 as a convention for naming these articles because it was felt (correctly, I think), that people writing articles on, say, World War II topics would be more likely to make a link to "P-51 Mustang" than a link to "North American P-51".

Five years on:

Things are a little different in 2008; the vast bulk of US military aircraft now have articles - really only the truly obscure are left to cover. There are also 5 years' worth of redirects in place, reducing the chance of duplicates being accidentally created.

What we're left with, then, is a situation where a small but extremely signficiant subset of our articles are named at odds with how the overwheming bulk of our aircraft coverage is named, and how entries on these types in aviation publishing are usually titled (for whatever that's worth).

If we were to change the convention, the real work wouldn't be in the page moves - they're fast and easy - but with adjusting the dozens of templates we've been laboriously implementing this year. Of course, that wouldn't have to happen overnight, but it would still be a big job. There may be a bot out there that could do it - I haven't looked into this.

So: could we have a quick show of hands on the following? --Rlandmann (talk) 23:58, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Assumptions: In the following, it's assumed that

1. "name" continues to only be official names; thus "Fighting Falcon", not "Viper", no "Aardvark"
2. article names continue to reflect the most common name for the family and don't attempt to capture every different designation applied to this aircraft and its variants (eg, P-51 Mustang, not P-51/F-51/A-36/F-6 Mustang/Invader/Apache, F4U Corsair, not F4U/FG/F2G/AU Corsair/Super Corsair; B-29 Superfortress, not B-29/P2B/F-13 Superfortress/Washington)

Leave things as they are

Designation-name, except when no name, then Manufacturer-designation
Eg: P-51 Mustang, F4U Corsair

• I would leave things as they are. With proper redirect pages anything remotely close to the aircraft's name will get readers to the aircraft article, so let's save all the potential labour and work on making the articles better instead. - Ahunt (talk) 00:33, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
• Concur. Except that since we're discussing a US topic, it would save "labor". ;) - BillCJ (talk) 00:53, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
• A lot of work for little or nothing to gain it seems. Also, there would be discussions/arguments over which manufacturer to use where mergers and acquisitions are involved. -Fnlayson (talk) 02:34, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
• I don't see a problem (although I did to start with!) Nimbus (talk) 22:04, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
• Better to leave things as they are; wholesale changes would just make things confusing to readers, especially those who might not know the manufacturer but know the name or designation.Minorhistorian (talk) 23:03, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
• This is my preference only by a slight edge over mfr-designation-name, mainly because of the Wikipedia convention that articles should generally use the most common usage of a name. AKRadecki^Speaketh 04:30, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
  • Parenthetical question for Rlandmann...in your "assumptions" section above, you said "no Aardvark"...and that leads me to a question...what are we going to use to judge whether a name is official? I'm asking because DoD 4120-15L lists "Aardvark" as the official name for the F-111, but the article's name doesn't use it (it's not even in the lead paragraph, although it's the title of the infobox...I don't care which way we go, but we should a) have some consistency and b) agree on what determines a name to be official). AKRadecki^Speaketh 04:37, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
    • The F-111 was nicknamed Aardvark until the US Air Force retired it in 1996 and made the name official. That's a rare case for US official names. See F-111D/F Aardvark -Fnlayson (talk) 04:59, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
    • Yet we have SR-71 Blackbird, where "Blackbird", to my knowledge, was never official. I have no problem with "Blackbird" being in the article title, but to exclude "Aardvark" seems inconsistant. - BillCJ (talk) 05:16, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
  • Sorry guys - Aardvark was evidently a poor choice of example on my part; the nickname was indeed made official at the type's retirement. I included the comment as an assumption because, well, I assumed that's what we were doing! I'm sure I've seen chat about this over the years, but can't point to any right off the top of my head. But yes, I agree with the comments above that we should be consistent, and have some point of reference to judge the "official" status of a name. DoD 4120-15L would seem to be a sensible choice for contemporary types. The Naval Historical Center has a document here for past types - I couldn't find anything comparable for the Army/Air Force. As for the Blackbird, if that name's not actually official (and indeed, it's not in DoD 4120-15L), then notwithstanding anything else that we collectively come up with, I think this would be a clear case of being trumped by "common sense" - the usage is pretty widespread ;) (FWIW, the NASM says the name was official) But are we in agreement that "Fighting Falcon" is better in an article name than "Viper", and "Thunderbolt II" over "(Wart)hog"? --Rlandmann (talk) 06:16, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
• I'd argue to leave things as they are - I say this entirely for ease of use. On the occasions when I've had to make a link to an aircraft article, I've found the American ones simple to link to, whilst the RAF designations have usually involved a bit of ferreting around to find the right name. Lots of redirects are good, though! Shimgray | talk | 08:29, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I basically concur with leaving as is - the common names are what the great unwashed will inevitably look for - only historians and purists really divide A-12/YF-12/SR-71/M-21 up outside of the admittedly unofficial nickname, but even "Kelly" Johnson is quoted calling it the "Blackbird". I think the many redirects that have been in place take up the slack for the irregular names. Think, perhaps, the "Flying Mixmaster", as the XB-42 was dubbed. There were at least two designs dubbed the "Flying Bedstead" - the Bell Aerospace lunar descent simulator, and some equally "cagey" design in France in the late 1950s, as I recall. Mark Sublette (talk) 08:47, 14 October 2008 (UTC)Mark SubletteMark Sublette (talk) 08:47, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

• I dis-agree. Reference works commonly use M-d-N, so why be different. The search engine argument does not hold water, because anybody that uses the Wikipedia search engine deserves all they get, and any decent 3rd party search engine (e.g. Google or Yahoo) will deliver the wikipedia article as top of the list, without having to be exact.Petebutt (talk) 09:39, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Change to manufacturer-designation

(except for (rare, early) cases when no designation, then Manufacturer-name)
Eg: North American P-51, Chance-Vought F4U

• Just to play devils advocate her, but this form would standardize manufacturers of both civil and military aircraft, such as Douglas (C-47 Skytrain = military version of Douglas DC-3) - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 00:44, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Change to manufacturer-name

The "RAF solution" :)
(except when no name, then Manufacturer-designation")
Eg: North American Mustang, Chance-Vought Corsair

Change to manufacturer-designation-name

(leaving out whatever elements don't apply or are sufficiently ambiguous)
Eg: North American P-51 Mustang, Chance-Vought F4U Corsair

• The current situation is anomalous and the reasoning behind it is no longer applicable. This is what most reference works do, I think. --Rlandmann (talk) 23:58, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
• This would be my preferred solution as it follows standard reference usage. I can continue to (unenthusiastically) live with leaving it as is, though. Askari Mark (Talk) 02:30, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
• As already noted, this is the "industry standard" for reference works , so why be different. I think the burden of proof here is for those not in favour of this method.Petebutt (talk) 09:34, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

SH-2 first flight

Somewhat related to the discussion above about avyear articles, I found a reference to a first flight of the SH-2 in 1971 in aviation. I wonder if this is referring to the SH-2D LAMPS aircraft? Seems to be an inaccurate listing otherwise and the SH-2 article didn't say anything about a first flight in 1971. --Born2flie (talk) 14:09, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

The article 1971 in aviation doesn't meet WP:V as it has no references. Who knows what that date means without refs? - Ahunt (talk) 14:17, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

It was indeed the SH-2D. I've corrected this made this more explicit (the SH-2D was the first version of the SH-2 - earlier models were designated HU2K or UH-2) and brought most of the entries in the article up-to-date with the current citation fashion (not withstanding that WP:V still only calls for citations for "quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged" - emphasis in the original). Yes, I know this battle's well and truly over as well, even if policy doesn't actually reflect this yet. --Rlandmann (talk) 20:17, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Ah except that ref-hawks like me are likely to challenge anything that is not properly cited! - Ahunt (talk) 21:00, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

I thought that the Year in Aviation articles counted as List Articles and therefore had less stringent citing requirements?Nigel Ish (talk) 21:16, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Looking at the policy at WP:V I am not seeing that lists are held to a lower standard. - Ahunt (talk) 21:26, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

I'd also suggest that challenging an uncontroversial piece of information "on spec" goes quite against the spirit of WP:V. There's a nice essay on this very subject out there somewhere... but do you think I can find it just now? :)

Confirming too, that there's nothing at WP:V that talks about a different standard for lists; WP:LISTS repeats the WP:V advice about entries that are "challenged or likely to be challenged", and emphasises the need to reference "difficult or contentious subjects". --Rlandmann (talk) 21:30, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

You are probably thinking about this essay on MetaWiki. Don't worry I wouldn't do that! There is still a whole bunch too much speculation in articles, but I prefer to try and find refs where possible. Even first flight dates can be very controversial, however. Even very reliable refs can disagree. - Ahunt (talk) 21:41, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

LOL - no, that's not it :) There's one that specifically treats what we're talking about here. As for the other essay - I'd probably direct it at myself sooner than at any of you guys! I quite agree about speculation - any statement that contains a comparison, evaluation, or opinion really needs a ref to back it up. And while some first flight dates can be very controversial (sometimes relying on how we even define "flight") the vast majority of them are not. Those that are, of course, also require references, since they're "challenged or likely to be challenged". --Rlandmann (talk) 21:58, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Here it is! Not an essay - a policy proposal. While I think that this has a snowball's chance in hell in the current climate, I think it raises some nice points, especially in the section on challenging another user's edits. A whole lot of common sense there, IMHO. --Rlandmann (talk) 22:03, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

That is a pretty good proposal - nothing really controversial there. Worth reading though. Ahunt (talk) 22:25, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Image problem

I've just run across Image:Drawings of a Savoia-Marchetti SM.93.jpg, and it is very strange 3-view. The image page has had only one edit, by the original, who claims he made this image of a Savoia-Marchetti SM.93, but that is not what the image is. However, the image itself states that it is a G.222, which it is! Also, the image appears to be a scan from a book, and one can see the inner page fold mark streak on the left, typical of a copied book image, and other marks typical of copiers. I don't know how to deal with this type of problem. Did the uploader misrepresent his image, or has someone else uploaded another image in its place, but it doesn't show on the edit history? Or have some files been swapped by the server or something? If the 3-view of the G.222 is usable (which I doubt), the Aeritalia G.222 article does not currently have a 3-view. Thanks. - BillCJ (talk) 07:47, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I checked the history of the Savoia-Marchetti SM.93 article, and found something very interesting. See the following diffs:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Savoia-Marchetti_SM.93&diff=164459124&oldid=164458474
• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Savoia-Marchetti_SM.93&diff=164903592&oldid=164588478
• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Savoia-Marchetti_SM.93&diff=181881245&oldid=178996345
• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Savoia-Marchetti_SM.93&diff=184602948&oldid=182406560

Per these diffs, User:-The Bold Guy- added the image twice to the SM.93 page. After the first time, in Oct. 07, Stefano (yes, THAT Stefano! He was actually right once.) removed it, commenting "A SM.93 with the shape of G.222......" Bold Guy added it again in Jan 08, and EH101 removed it a day or so later. It appears to me that the uploader has copied an image of a G.222 (probably copy-righted), and is trying to passit off as his own work of a SM.93. What to do? - BillCJ (talk) 07:59, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

This is what Possibly Unfree Images is for. I've listed it there if anyone else wants to chip in with an opinion. --Rlandmann (talk) 10:30, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, RL. At 4am, it's hard to remember where to go with this stuff! Thanks for adding it. - BillCJ (talk) 17:14, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Bot unlinking 'avyears'?

According to my watchlist an awful lot of articles have just had their 'avyear' dates unlinked, quite disheartening as I added the date and template to many of them. I thought this template was safe from the date unlinking crusade? Nimbus (talk) 12:51, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Talk to User:Lightmouse. - Ahunt (talk) 13:32, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

I just did, I only spotted it just before I had to go to work and also wanted to look back through the archive here to see when use of this template was disallowed (which I can't find). Bemused and demotivated. Nimbus (talk) 23:23, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

It's never been "disallowed", although linking to "years in aviation" (with or without the "avyear" template) has been controversial for a long time. However, there's been a "sea change" throughout Wikipedia more generally regarding the linking of years, with the prevailing (though hardly unanimous) view being that they shouldn't be linked. The "prevailing view" is (as you've seen) using bots to help this view prevail...

We're not an island here, and much as it pains me to say so (I liked the links to "year in aviation"), this battle's already been fought and lost.

It's also worth reflecting that in exactly the same way that we like to ensure a uniformity of style across aircraft-related articles, there are others who are trying to ensure the same thing for Wikipedia right across the whole project. --Rlandmann (talk) 23:35, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

So how do we link to to the 100+ 'year in aviation' pages without using a date? Do we write 1974 in aviation in the infobox now with the day and month unlinked? I'm not going to bother as it will probably get unlinked yet again. Seems like WP has gone backwards here, great shame. Nimbus (talk) 00:03, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Other changes are being made as well eg:

08:01, 13 October 2008 Lightmouse (Talk | contribs) (67,298 bytes) (Date links per wp:mosnum/Other using AWB)

so that citations which have been perfectly satisfactory up until now are suddenly appearing as error notices - I've spent ages going through Supermarine Spitfire operational history just to untangle some of them. Really frustrating; surely there should be some sort of warning given to other editors before such changes are made?Minorhistorian (talk) 00:19, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

@ Nimbus. The aviation chronology pages are linked from {{aviation lists}} that appears at the foot of every aircraft article; the individual years are also linked from the main article on that year (eg, 1978 prominently links to 1978 in aviation, as well as a host of other subject- and country-specific "year in" pages). So they're not quite orphans.

The principle underlying the Great Unlinking is that "year" or even "year in" links violate the WP:OVERLINK guideline to "Only make links that are relevant to the context". I'd agree that this is the case with links to "year", but strongly disagree in the case of links to "year in". I think that an aircraft article should prominently link to the "year in aviation" in which it first flew, and that Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band should link prominently to 1967 in music. I'd therefore rather rely on the WP:BTW guideline that asks us to consider an article's place in the web of topics that is Wikipedia.

It's been suggested in various places that such links be placed in the "see also" sections of articles. If anyone thinks it would be a good idea to implement this across the project, it would be a very simple task for a bot to create a line in the "see also" section to say "For other first flights in 1948, see 1948 in aviation", based on the year provided in the infobox.

@ Minorhistorian - please leave a note on my talkpage showing Lightbot breaking citations, so I can follow it up. --Rlandmann (talk) 01:02, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) On the Avyear links: Since, IIRC, the concensus in WPAIR has been to use the Avyear links primarily within the infobox, is there a (simple) way to build that functionality into the infobox itself? The other alternative I see would be to include the Avyear article links themselves in the See also section, but this could get unyieldy very quickly. - BillCJ (talk) 01:27, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) Yes, I see that they are linked from the Navbox but it is only tonight that I have noticed that so it is fair to say that a casual reader will probably not even think of going down there to find more 'goodies'. I should state that I agree with the date unlinking in general but still think that there is a special case for infoboxes of aircraft and also in music which I have written one article on. I did not use 'year in music' just because I forgot it was available. To me WP is about easy 'surfing' for information and what is happening at the moment just seems to go against that. Bill may be on the right lines, I would like to see a bot repair what I see as a retrograde step. Nimbus (talk) 01:31, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

(undent) @ BillCJ - Sure they could be coded into the infobox itself, but that wouldn't really solve anything - the same people removing the links elsewhere could (and no doubt would) remove them from the infobox code, for the same reasons (whether we agree with them or not). See my response above re: adding them to the "See also" section. We're probably really only talking about two dates here - the First flight and EIS; the "withdrawn" date comparatively seldom appears in articles, and is problematic anyway. I don't know that two such links would be too unwieldy in an article; if a lot clunkier than what we've been doing up to this point!

@ Nimbus - I agree with everything you're saying, but don't think that it's viable to think in terms of having a "special case" recognised. As I said, everything I'm seeing around the project tells me that this matter is already resolved. And personally, I wouldn't want to be in a position where this project is telling certain editors that they can't have a special case made for their "pet articles" while on the other hand, asking for a special case from the wider community.

I think what we really need to focus on is whether we still think that there's value in having individual aircraft articles link to the "years in aviation" pages (even if it's presented more clunkily and in a less prominent position) and if so, which dates do we include and how do we structure these links. --Rlandmann (talk) 01:37, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

It is safe to assume then that 'years in music' and other 'years in' links will also become null and void. I don't visit that project but it would be interesting to see what their reaction is. Putting a link to the 'avyear' in the 'see also' section seems daft (and it will also be unlinked by a bot later anyway), some clever person will say 'why don't you put it at the top'! Doh! I guess that now we have over 2,500,000 articles on 'notable' subjects there is less and less left to write about which almost leaves editing down to copy editing, style and MOS 'guideline' issues. I see edit warring on the higher profile articles as a symptom of the same thing. It's hard to score a goal when the posts keep moving. Nimbus (talk) 02:04, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Or when you though you were playing baseball, and now they tell you to use the rules for cricket! (Or vice versa for the cross-ponders!) If a small cabal of editors now thinks they have the right to change any guideline at their leisure and claim it's WP-wide consensus, rather than actually write and improve articles, then what else can we do? I think we're at the point where we just go with the flow, as there's not much else we can do and still stay sane! I'm here to write and edit articles, not argue about silly guidelines. I'm of half a mind to stop using any formatting at all, beyond that necessary for WP:AIR purposes (infoboxes, linking to related articles, and cats), and let the all-mighty Smackbot and Lightbot clean up the mess! - BillCJ (talk) 02:52, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

@Nimbus - one of the issues here is that while "years in" links were once-upon-a-time used by a number of different projects, they have been gradually deprecated - AFAIK WP:AIR is actually one of the last projects to have been actively advocating their use. Therefore, I don't think you'll be finding any great outcry from many other projects - the battles there (if there ever were any) were over literally years ago (WP:Music stopped using links like these at least by May 2006). There's some recent argument over at WP:Film though. What you say about someone else coming along one day to tell us "you're doing it all wrong - why don't you put that in the infobox?" is sadly relevant. Over the last few months, we've had someone screaming loudly at us because we sometimes include the manfacturer's name in page names for US military aircraft; and someone else screaming loudly at us because we don't always do so. We recently had someone trying to TFD a navbox for a minor manufacturer saying it was "overkill" and that such links should go in the "see also" section; while I recall an incident some time ago now where someone else was stripping said links out of the old "navigational footer" we were using and wanting to create templates from them. We'll never please everybody!

I think we have to accept that we're a small part of a large organism that is subject to change and mutation, and is even subject to fads and fashions. All we can sensibly do is, as BillCJ says, "go with the flow", and try to keep things as flexible as possible (by templating as much code as possible) so that when the next whim of fashion comes along, it will be easy to adapt to meet it. --Rlandmann (talk)

Bill has it right, I think the same. It may be that we need some kind of more formal voting system for changes like this to statistically prove consensus for them. 'Only make links that are relevant', I can't see what would be more relevant than linking to the year of first flight. I found it interesting to learn which aircraft flew at the same time and entered them as I went along but stopped doing this as I had a feeling that 'avyear' was on its way out . I read most of the discussions about formatting changes you mention just above RL, I don't think it was appreciated by the suggestor that redlinks are not supposed to be used in the 'see also' section. The navboxes are great and show a live list of needed articles. I do appreciate that we are part of a bigger community, I believe that the aircraft and aviation projects produce high quality articles which get this way through a fair amount of standard 'self-policing' which is not necessarily noticed by editors outside the project, they just come in and tell us our full stops (periods) are in the wrong place. Just wondering what the next formatting guideline to be enforced will be. C'est la Vie. Nimbus (talk) 11:33, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Any mileage in using categories (like Category:Aircraft first flown in 1999) and using the year in aviation as the reference page for the cat. MilborneOne (talk) 11:37, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

But then we'll get all the CfD Nazis saying that we're overcategorizing. However, I do think it would be easier to cat the aircraft by first flight than link to an article that needs updating every time someone builds a link to it. If the cats took over for linking to a year in aviation article, then what do we do with the other significant dates that are maintained on the year in aviation articles? --Born2flie (talk) 11:46, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Another navbox?!! Just wondering why the dates are still linked in the 'year in aviation' articles, perhaps the bot hasn't got to them yet. Nimbus (talk) 11:58, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

I think that the "year in aviation" articles are viable in their own rights - there are plenty of other subject-specific "year in" series around Wikipedia. I note that the two largest encyclopedias of aircraft ever published - Jane's Encyclopedia of Aviation and The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Aircraft both contained just such a Chronology section. I'll also point to the stand-alone Chronicle of Aviation for which Bill Gunston was editor-in-chief.

Personally, I'm not enthusiastic about using categories for this right now, mostly because of concerns about category clutter and possible precedents, but also because it partially duplicates the "decade" element of the main category system anyway. If and when category intersection ever gets properly implemented, it may become essential. Note too that the "first flight" section in the "year in aviation" articles does things that a category can't do - like specify the first flight of a significant variant, the registration or serial of the aircraft making the flight, or any other significant aspects of the flight ("30 February: Foo F-123 Q-WHAT - the first flight of a rotary-wing ornithopter"). --Rlandmann (talk) 20:34, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Out of interest a user has started adding aircraft to the Category:1908 in aviation. MilborneOne (talk) 09:53, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

It seems that there is some rethinking going on about this subject, Lightbot has been 'paused'. I threw two pennies in here and there is more general discussion on that page. I wondered why many other articles were unaffected by the bot then realised that it was going through them alphabetically, it 'hit' me first because I had just spent a lot of time on the Armstrong Siddeley engine articles. Will see what happens. Nimbus (talk) 15:50, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Modular templates

The modular templates seem to have been working without complaint for some months now, and are seeing increasing use, particularly on Aero Engines. Does anyone have a problem with going ahead now to replace Infobox Aircraft with Infobox Aircraft Begin+Infobox Aircraft Type?

On a related note, I recently removed Infobox Aircraft from the Amerika Bomber page, since that article doesn't actually describe an aircraft but a project for which a number of different aircraft were designed. If we were to have an "Infobox Aircraft Programme", what kinds of parameters would it have? --Rlandmann (talk) 07:13, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

I posted a comment on the template talk for the aircraft category template. The modular templates cause problems with images stacking up, creating white space if the TOC isn't long enough to compensate. The issue applies to IE users, as far as I can tell, who do happen to be the largest population of browser users. Consequently, images have to be placed in irregular positions to compensate and make the article look normal. That, and I just don't like pastel colors. --Born2flie (talk) 14:36, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry - I'm still getting to addressing those comments (because I haven't found any easy fix yet!).

However, this has nothing whatsoever to do with the use of the modular template per se - the same effect would happen in any combination of a large infobox (or any other table, actually) with an article with short sections and many pictures outside the infobox.

And in the specific case I'm asking about, there will be no visible difference, since it's exactly the same code, just split between two template calls. --Rlandmann (talk) 19:05, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

I think migrating to the new split template is fine. Can this be done by a bot? I not in many cases the image and caption lines are not immediately after the title line. Would this be problematic for a bot?

Also, what about "Infobox Aviation"? Born, Nimbus, and I have been using it on various topic-related articles. Code-wise, it's the same as "Infobox Aircraft Begin", but without being "stackable". SHould they be migrated also? And will the title "Infobox Aircraft Begin" be a problem on some of the aviation-related pages where it is used, such as Amphibious assault ship? Might we be able to use a more generic name that would encourage other projects to develop add-on templates of their own?

As to "Infobox Program(me)", I guess the inception and completion/cancellation dates, status, and perhaps the contenders and winners of the project. Also Purpose/objective of the program. - BillCJ (talk) 19:29, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

I have no issues with using the modular template for the aircraft, and it should be fine for replacing Infobox Aviation. My contention is the large table for the aircraft categories template that is used on some immature articles and supplants images which actually serve the article better than that specific table does, especially when the categories template is really just a navbox in infobox form. I have the same issue with the wildland firefighting template from the firefighting project. I have no other objections except, please, let's not use pastel colors!!! :D --Born2flie (talk) 19:55, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

@BillCJ - "Infobox Aviation" is a separate issue and I wasn't including it in this specific discussion. A fundamental issue there is that our sister projects already have their own very specific infoboxes and colour schemes; to try to "genericise" Infobox Aircraft Begin would require buy-in at a much higher level, with all the various Aviation WikiProjects agreeing that we want to adopt a uniform style and presentation. And yes, it's definitely work for a bot! The specific order of the lines of data doesn't matter; a bot will be able to sort the right parameters into the right template. But thanks for that heads-up - it will be one more thing to confirm with a bot operator. PS - WP:SHIPS just called and they want their Amphibious assault ship back ;)

@Born2flie (and also Bill who's asked me about this) - give me a couple more days and I'll respond on the talk page of the relevant template. It's quite a separate issue from what's being proposed here. In the meantime, I'll just point out that the third member of the Wikipedia "box" family is the seriesbox, which this is an example of. These are actually quite widespread, although I'm not aware of any other aviation-specific ones. The one on this page is a lot of fun though! --Rlandmann (talk) 20:36, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Rotary-wing hang glider

The article Rotary-wing hang glider was added as a See also link to both the Autogyro and Focke Achgelis Fa 330 articles. It seems to include a lot of speculative information based on one or two sources (one of which is a broken link for me), but this may just be the interpretation of the source information; one of which seems to discuss problems of development. There is a discussion for merging on the talk page, which seems to be the most sensible course of action for this article. Thoughts? --Born2flie (talk) 19:06, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

I read it - it is 99% speculation. The three refs break down this way: The http://www.uboat.net/technical/bachstelze.htm one is about gyro kites and not this subject at all, http://www.kate.aviators.net/gyro12.htm is a bad link, http://www.jumpnfly.privat.t-online.de/ni.htm should actually point to http://www.jumpnfly.privat.t-online.de/alt/ni.htm which is a personal website showing one person actually attempting to fly a gyro-hang glider. No sign he was successful. The content about the Bachstelze and Benson are off topic as these belong in Rotor kite and Autogyro respectively. Essentially the whole article should say that this guy tried to fly a gyro-hang glider in 1983. The rest is off-topic and unreferenced. I would recommend re-redirecting it all to Rotor kite instead. - Ahunt (talk) 19:37, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

I did find this possible ref http://www.jumpnfly.privat.t-online.de/alt/giro_e_nitsch.pdf which seems to say that the whole project was not a success. This really should be a section in the Rotor kite article and not a separate article. - Ahunt (talk) 19:42, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

The difference between a Rotary Wing Hang Glider (a neologism?) and a "conventional" rotor kite seems to be the RWHG's use of flexible surfaces for directional stability/control. The unsuccessful example in the article above may itself prove notable; I note that the builder of the device and author of the article has an article on de, and the device is now supposedly preserved in the Lillienthal Museum.

As a first step, the article should be cleared of the material that really belongs to rotor kite and various bits of unsourced speculation. If anything substantial remains, I'd say leave it where it is; but in the more likely scenario that there isn't anything substantial left, I'd say merge it until if and when more material can be found on the concept... --Rlandmann (talk) 21:39, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree. - Ahunt (talk) 23:14, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Article Alerts

B. Wolterding has created a bot called ArticleAlertbot (talk · contribs) that gives alerts to different WikiProjects, based on the project's talk page banner. Your project was interested in a bot like this one per comments on the talk page. An example of a report is here. Instructions on how to add your project are here. Alerts should be generated daily. Any feedback is appreciated, and should go here. LegoK^ontribsT^alkM 01:44, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

I personally dislike bots, having the {{avyear}} template abused recently but maybe this is a 'friendly' one. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 01:54, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Seems like a good idea - It certainly doesn't seem to cause any harm. What really would be helpful is a bot giving warning of image problems, but I suspect that may impracticable owing to the fact that images are on commons.Nigel Ish (talk) 15:28, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Survivors

Had a go at finding a better format for the survivors articles as the current presentation is a bit fan boyish and uses lots of acronym/abbreviations and external links. Please look at B-47 Stratojet survivors comments welcome. MilborneOne (talk) 12:34, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Overall the format looks good - the tables are a helpful way to display the information and reduces clutter considerably. The only concern I have is that the images, because they don't fit in with the tables, create a lot of excess whitespace. - Ahunt (talk) 13:37, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I have moved the images inside the table, looks better. MilborneOne (talk) 17:09, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I have my user preferences set to 300px (so I always see the "worst case" when working on articles) and it really stretches the table a bit. How forcing the thumbnails to the normal default of 180 px so that the table always works well, regardless of user preferences? - Ahunt (talk) 17:14, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

OK tried another tweak. MilborneOne (talk) 19:00, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

That looks really good now! I like it. - Ahunt (talk) 23:04, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Looks good to me too. --Rlandmann (talk) 06:40, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Zlin/Morovan aircraft

As you may have noticed, Moravan Otrokovice Z 43 has just survived this AFD, with the comment that the articles covering the Z 40 series (i.e. Z 42, Z 142 and Z 242 two seaters, and Z 43 and Z 143 two seaters are a mess, and proposing some sort of merger. Having looked at them, they certainly appear to be in a bit of a state, with inconsistant article names, format and coverage with lots of overlapping and duplication between the articles.There certainly seems to be milage for a merger between the Z 43 and Z 143 articles, and possibly between the articles for the two and four seater aircraft as they are closely related. We also could do with deciding what to name the articles - are they Morovan Otrokovice Z xx, Zlin Z xx or Morovan Zlin Z xx?Nigel Ish (talk) 19:35, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

• Also Zlin Trener and Zlin Trener & Akrobat should probably be merged (and improved drastically!).Nigel Ish (talk) 19:40, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

The pre-war Zlin firm (located at Otrokovice) was renamed Moravan Narodni Podnik in 1949. However, the aircraft themselves continued to be called Zlin (as explicitly noted by Mondey's New Illustrated Encyclopedia of Aircraft under both the "Zlin" and "Moravan" entries). The continued usage of the name "Zlin" for the aircraft themselves can be found in various Jane's All the World's Aircraft over the years, and indeed the company website. I don't think there can really be any choice other than "Zlin Z 26" "Zlin Z 43" etc. I'm still trying to find out how the article cam to be PRODded, but while all the various Google searches cited in the PROD template all drew exactly zero hits for "Moravan Otrokovice Z 43" they all came up with a healthy number of hits for "Zlin Z 43". I'll get onto this now. --Rlandmann (talk) 20:14, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

G.91Y image on it.wiki

There is a nice image of an Italian Air Force G.91Y (the twin engine variant) at it:Immagine:G-91Y al museo di Vigna di Valle 01.jpg. It appears to have been donated to WP by the museum exclusively for WP, and as such cannot be posted to Commons. However, I cannot tell if the image is licensed it.wiki alone, as I don't read Italian. Could someone look into this and see if it is transferrable to en.wiki? I am working (very slowly) on an article for the G.91Y, and this is the best image that I have been able to find of the aircraft. Thanks. - BillCJ (talk) 02:29, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately not usable here on en because the licence is for non-commercial use only and therefore non-free. En stopped allowing this sort of image back in 2005. --Rlandmann (talk) 02:48, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

OK, thanks. That's what I need to know. Anyone going to Italy soon? :) - BillCJ (talk) 03:50, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Hi. We (the Italian Wikiproject aviation members I mean) live in Italy. Unfortunately it is not a matter of having opportunities to take photos of VdV G91Y, but the problem is we cannot release them in the public domain due to a clear museum notice which forbids it. In truth, we asked for a way for publishing our photos made as normal visitors for educational use (in Italy we have no “fair use” or "free view rights" at all) and we only obtained this “half permission” from the museum director. We faced this situation this way, invoking it.wiki EDP rules, as there are no so well preserved G91Y around anymore and we have apparently no other way to obtain free images. Anyway, always feel free to contact it.wiki aviation project talk page where there are for sure people eager to give an hand to our English speaking colleagues (as far as we can). --EH101 (talk) 09:05, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Armstrong Siddeley engines

Working through the {{ASaeroengines}} navbox there is one redlink that I can not find any information on, the Armstrong Siddeley Cougar, the only page I found on the net was this [6] which lists this engine but also the Armstrong Siddeley Nimbus, a phantom engine that was discussed here and prodded due to non-existance. The Cougar should appear in Lumsden's book if it flew, if it existed but did not fly then it is probably non-notable. The Deerhound and Ounce did exist and fly, will produce articles for them in time. Cross checking the list of aircraft engines the 'Cougar' is there and curiously a 'Gipsy' and 'Hornet' (DH Moths, must be a gremlin?). So I am just checking if anyone has any info on the 'Cougar' before I remove the redlink from the navbox. Thanks Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 19:00, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Should have looked in the Flight archive! [7], also found it in Janes. Maybe it did not fly? If that's the case then I just want to check if it is notable enough for an article (I would say that it is due to it's departure from traditional AS designs). Cheers Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 19:46, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

E-3 Sentry specifications

Hi to all. I'm an aero-wiki-translate-writer from it.wiki (with my usual problem of limited vocabulary). Ihe work I'm doing now is removing POV from a few pages in it.wiki and to see your E-3 Sentry Royal Air Force/Royal Saudi Air Force/French Air Force specifications I suspect a misunderstanding. The loaded weight is 335,000 lb (152,090 kg) but is major than max takeoff weight, 334,000 lb (151,636 kg). It's a mistake? I await your response, thanks :-)--Threecharlie (talk) 07:30, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, MTOW is 347,000 pounds (156,150 kilograms) according to http://www.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=98. Actually NATO lists the MTOW even lower (147,429 kg / 325,000 lb). I can't find the loaded weight in their documents, but it's not impossible for the loaded weight to be higher than the MTOW since they support aerial refueling. - Berkoet (talk) 08:50, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

It is possible that the figures are correct because many aircraft have a 'Maximum Ramp Weight' which is higher than the MTOW to allow for fuel burn during start-up and taxi, the specifications of the Gulfstream G550 show this as an example. Cheers Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 13:25, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks :-) Good flies--Threecharlie (talk) 00:19, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Guidelines on usage of nicknames and code names

Over time, we’ve been evolving a general consensus regarding “non-official” names – nicknames, code names, etc. – but it’s not captured in our style, page content or naming convention guidelines. Here’s a rough first pass I’d like to offer up for discussion:

Use of aircraft nicknames and code names: Officially assigned nicknames (e.g., F-22 Raptor) are treated as part of the full name of an aircraft; accordingly, they should be used in the article name (in accordance with specific guidance per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (aircraft)), and may be used – preferably sparingly – throughout the article. Commonly used, but unofficial nicknames (e.g., "Warthog" for the A-10 Thunderbolt II) should be identified in the introduction, but rarely used in the main text.

Code names, most notably WWII wartime cryptonyms assigned to Japanese aircraft and NATO reporting names for Soviet and Chinese aircraft, should never be used in the article name, as they are not part of the proper, official name of the aircraft; they were often assigned because the actual designation was unknown; uncertain or unwieldy. They should, however, be identified in the introduction, for the sake of historical reference, and in the section on variants, if relevant.

Also, I’m unsure whether this should be added, since there are several places that make some sort of sense: Wikipedia:WikiProject Aviation/Style guide – which involves all of aviation, not just aircraft; Wikipedia:Naming conventions (aircraft) – although this goes beyond just naming; or Wikipedia:WikiProject Aircraft/page content – either as a subheader under “Name” or “Body” or perhaps as a separate section.

Thoughts on wording and placement are appreciated. Askari Mark (Talk) 18:43, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Your proposal sounds good to me! - Ahunt (talk) 18:47, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Looks OK perhaps part one should go in the naming convention and both parts in the style guide. Is it worth adding that official names should not be placed in quotes for example P-51 "Mustang" as these sometime appear when editors dont know the difference between official and unofficial/nicknames. MilborneOne (talk) 19:06, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Good catch, Mil! I'd meant to include that, but I keep getting interrupted by "honey-do's". BTW, I'd also meant to suggest some further distinguishing treatment: I’ve been NATO code names in single quotes so they’ll stand out as something different from a name, but not a nickname (which I place in double quotes, if unofficial). I'd further like to recommend leaving the code names outside of wikilinks to the article (i.e., as straight "black" text). Askari Mark (Talk) 19:43, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

The Mil helicopter series lists the NATO reporting name in parentheses using double quotation marks (e.g. Mil Mi-8). Under the WP:LEAD style guideline, additional names should be bolded on first occurrence. Under the Mil articles, it seems that has been applied solely to designations and not to nicknames. --Born2flie (talk) 23:47, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Born2flie raises a good point. Since the code names are not "real" names – or even normal nicknames – should they be bolded at first mention as well? Generally, I've noticed that editors have not been bolding them. (I haven't.) Thoughts/opinions? Askari Mark (Talk) 22:02, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes I think the NATO reporting names should be bolded and possibly used in the infobox name (but not in the article title). There is a certain age generation of 'Cold War defenders' that will remember the name more than the type number. (including myself!). Often wondered if the Russian aircraft had their own names (instead of just numbers), can't think of one. A new navbox for NATO reporting names would be very useful (talked myself into a job there!) Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 01:33, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

I would say that NATO reporting names should be treated cautiously and that more preference should be given the names and nicknames of the operating services or country of origin, rather than those by NATO, for NPOV sake. Hip and Hind are easily recognizable, but Hook, Hoplite, Hound, etc. are not so well known these days. There was also an apparently short lived or else obscure guideline for lead sections where additional names of an article's subject were italicized, and this may be more appropriate or at least more palatable for highlighting nicknames and codenames without seeming to elevate them to the same status as the country/manufacturer designation. --Born2flie (talk) 06:17, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

I can understand caution about using the NATO names, this line is from the article: 'Perhaps for reasons of morale, NATO nicknames are weak or laughable eg: Soviet fighter aircraft: 'flogger', 'fishbed' & 'frogfoot' - compared to Nato fighter names such as 'Eagle' 'Lightning' 'Tornado' etc.' I note that the statement is unreferenced and probably should not be in the article. My perception of the system was that it was intended as an easy way to cover all the types and never thought of it as being derogatory, although some of the names were strange. Many of the Soviet aircraft articles already have the reporting name in the lead (and bolded), if the finalised guideline is not to mention the NATO name then we would strictly have to remove it from articles. Not fussed either way, I can see that the goal here is to get consistency across the project.Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 12:46, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't agree with not including the NATO name. I mean, for goodness sake, how many English-speaking countries are members or allies of NATO? This being the English Wikipedia, the exclusion of NATO names will be 1) immediately recognized, and 2) initiate endless reversions of editors trying to insert the NATO reporting name back into the article. They're already in the articles. Our project should probably come up with an opinion and discuss with WPMILHIST to establish a unified guideline. I think the opinions are

1. The reporting name is an additional name and should be bolded according to the WP:LEAD guideline.
2. The reporting name can be controversial and should not be treated as equal to primary designations, so italics may be used.
3. The reporting name should not be highlighted by bolding or italics at all, and quotations should be used to establish the name outside of giving preference to any POV.

Given what I've seen regarding the discussion, I think #3 is the best option as I've seen in the Mil helicopter articles, but arguments for #1 will be hard to defeat since the MOS is often used to trump project guidelines, no matter what the logic is behind the deviation from the MOS. NATO reporting names were originally given according to the type of aircraft: B — bomber (Bear, Badger, Blinder); C — cargo (Cub, Condor, Cossack); H — helicopter (Hip, Hind, Havoc, Hokum); F — fighter (Fishbed, Fulcrum, Flogger, Foxbat). I'm not sure if that is still true. --Born2flie (talk) 14:38, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

(Undent)I think I was getting my wires slightly crossed, Mark's proposal was not to mention the NATO name (or any nickname) in the article title (which I agree with), I read it as 'not to be included in the text' which was wrong. Certainly worth clarifying how these names are to be handled in the text. Is an official nickname actually an official name?! Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 15:08, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

I think we may have been going around in circles the original post from Askari Mark simply suggests that unofficial names (includes NATO codenames) shouldnt be used in the article titles or in the body of the text to describe the aircraft apart from a mention in variants to relate codenames to different variants and any nicknames and codenames are mentioned in the lead/introduction. The POV point was that the codenames were being used in descriptive text and tables as if they were real names, which they are not. I think the only bit of contention is should they be bolded or in italics.MilborneOne (talk) 16:34, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, let's make it clear. I'm not at all recommending eliminating NATO code names. That's been proposed and discussed, and the consensus has been to include them in the intro but not the title of an aircraft article. I'm merely trying to codify a way to highlight them while also distinguishing them format-wise from official names (e.g., Sukhoi Su-25), historical nicknames (e.g., "Grach"), and NATO cryptonyms (e.g., 'Frogfoot') so that they’re consistent and clear what they are “at a glance”. Thus we would have, format-wise, something along the line of “Sukhoi Su-25 Shturmovik, nicknamed "Grach" ("Rook" or "Crow"), (NATO reporting name 'Frogfoot')” – if the Russians had actually given it that name formally – as what you might find in an introduction; only the formal designation and name (if any) should appear as the article name. Of course, this is part of also capturing the current consensus on this element of naming, per se.

Regarding NATO’s selection of cryptonyms being intentionally derogatory, this is a long-standing myth. It generally stems from the use of ‘Fagot’ for the MiG-15 and the ignorance of its original meaning as a bundle of sticks – the usual and most widespread meaning in those days. I’ll remove the one Nimbus pointed out, but they should be eradicated wherever found. Askari Mark (Talk) 00:35, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I'd say that's a pretty much perfect formulation. The only thing missing from the example is a case where the "official" nickname (in this case, "Shturmovik") is immediately followed by a translation. --Rlandmann (talk) 01:23, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I would recommend the translation follow parenthetically, as done for Grach. Askari Mark (Talk) 01:52, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree; I was just noting that it's the one element absent from the example (and I don't think that "Shturmovik" is such a good example, unless there's a more literal translation than "Attack aircraft" that I'm not aware of). It would be nice to come up with a "canonical" example with all the elements in place that we could then document as a model. Can anyone think of an example of an aircraft that had an official name in a language other than English and a nickname in a language other than English and a (NATO/Allied/other) reporting name? --Rlandmann (talk) 02:26, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the Shturmovik was an artificial example; in fact, it was an unofficial nickname for the Su-25, as well as the class. As for your question, off the top of my head, the closest I can come right now is perhaps "A6M, Rei shiki Kanjo sentoki (Type 0 Carrier Fighter), nicknamed "Zero", "Zero-sen", and "Rei-sen", (Allied code name 'Zeke')"? Frankly, the difficulty in coming up with an example that covers all the bases is reassuring in that there won't be too many occasions with excessive nomenclature clutter – which can usually be handled in those rare cases by not doctrinarily stuffing them all in the same sentence. Askari Mark (Talk) 02:49, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Specs template issue

Template {{Aircraft specifications}} currently has a format flaw. The Armament bolded label does not start on a new line like it should in some cases. See Sukhoi Su-34, Eurofighter Typhoon, and AH-1 Cobra for examples. It seems to work OK if the gun, missile & rocket fields are used instead such as with A-10 Thunderbolt II. I tried one fix and Nigel Ish did also without much luck. Maybe people that understands the template code better than me can help with this. Thanks. -Fnlayson (talk) 16:03, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

You could just use {{aerospecs}} ! MilborneOne (talk) 17:59, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

It worked OK until recently, revert to earlier version?GraemeLeggett (talk) 19:47, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Fixed the benighted thing. :P --Rlandmann (talk) 20:11, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Super! Thank you. :) -Fnlayson (talk) 20:25, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

License-built

Many aircraft engines are built under license in other countries, probably more so than aircraft. What if we added a "Licensee" field to Template:Infobox Aircraft Engine? Any thoughts? - BillCJ (talk) 05:21, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

what about |other_manufacturer= (use it in the same style as aircraft Infobox parameter |other_users= ie no more than three. GraemeLeggett (talk) 11:31, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

I think that would be a better approach; not all copies are licenced copies, and sometimes our sources don't explicitly say that a licence was obtained and we shouldn't simply assume that. --Rlandmann (talk) 19:11, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Good suggestions; I'm fine with them. - BillCJ (talk) 19:25, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Life magazine photo archive

I read earlier today that the photo archive of 'Life' magazine is now hosted on Google, I forgot about it until now when someone just sent sent me a link [8] of a selection of F-104 photos from the archive. Not sure if their archive photos can be used on WP but they are certainly interesting, must be thousands in there. Cheers Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 22:47, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Red Links to redirects

Something strange on Slingsby Aviation, a User has created articles from all the redlinks that then redirect back to Slingsby Aviation. He/She then removed all the (now blue) links from the article. I reverted the removal of links then realised I have added back the circular links! so I have self reverted for the moment. If all the red links are changed into redirects it does make it difficult to see what needs to be created. One minor point is all the redirects dont meet the article naming convention anyhow (Slingsby T.42 Eagle instead of Slingsby Eagle). Any thoughts should it be stopped before it spreads to other aircraft articles? MilborneOne (talk) 21:16, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Politely explain to the user what they are doing and how it affects our work? One of the problems is the inability to undo the creation of the redirect - something has to in its place hence a couple of stubby Slingsby aircraft articles I'v just created.GraemeLeggett (talk) 13:10, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

FWIW, a couple of points. Maybe I'm misunderstanding Milborne's point, but I see no problem with redirects being created which use all manner of variations of an aircraft's name. The point of having a redirect is that if someone is looking for the article and they don't know the WP naming convention and enter a different variation, they'll still get there. As for removing a bad redirect, you can always tag it for CSD or drop a note to me or one of the other admins in the project. AKRadecki^Speaketh 17:08, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

I understand what you say Akradecki but my main point is the loss of the redlink (to whatever variant of the name) gives a false impression that the article has been created. MilborneOne (talk) 18:23, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I fully agree with that...having a reasonable number of redlinks is a good thing. AKRadecki^Speaketh 19:13, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Also agree that if specific redlinks have been turned blue by redirecting them to the company then they should be made red again, I have not looked closely at what has been happening, I've added an image to Slingsby T.21. I have taken some photos of the T30 Prefect, T49 Capstan and T51 Dart today if articles get started (not fantastic as they are all stuck in the hangar at this time of year). On naming conventions for Slingsby gliders, Janes give the full name and number i.e. 'Slingsby T.31 Tandem Tutor' etc., or just the manufacturer and number (Slingsby T.21B). Martin Simons in his book titles the chapters 'Type 31 Tandem Tutor' and abbreviates the types with a hyphen instead of a dot (T-31 etc). A quick glance at a Slingsby generic repair manual treats the later types at least as T59, T65 etc. (no dot or hyphen). Some types on the field are almost always known by their name Vega or their number T21. Probably doesn't help much but it's some info. The Slingsby Aviation section at List of gliders has type numbers in the wiki code but uses a piped name in most cases. The code in Slingsby Aviation lists them slightly differently so there is currently some scope for confusion, perhaps the redlinks in the list and the company article should be aligned to reflect the project naming convention. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 17:38, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

In case anybody else stumbles on this discussion, the Slingsby debacle has been resolved satisfactorily now. Petebutt (talk) 10:41, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Nomination for Deletion - Raj Hamsa Ultralights

The WikiProject article on this fairly prominent aircraft manufacturer has been nominated for deletion on the basis that it lacks non-company refs and therefore does not meet notability requirements. Please feel free to add your comments one way or the other or, better yet, add some refs. - Ahunt (talk) 14:53, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Sigh. AKRadecki^Speaketh 17:03, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

My thoughts too. Thank you to everyone who dived in - we dodged that bullet. - Ahunt (talk) 21:54, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

T53 image requests

I've been working on the Lycoming T53 page, and found a display cutaway engine. However, I've not been able to find an under-the-cowl pic of a T53 so far. The article is long enough for at least one more image, so it would be nice to find one in a Huey or AH-1 if possible, but any other type would work to, including an OV-1. Thanks. - BillCJ (talk) 19:32, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Lethal Lady

I proded Lethal Lady with the comment Does not appear to be notable every aircraft type has one aircraft that has the most hours it appears not to have done anything else of note, at the most a one liner in the F-16 article. The prod was removed without comment. Next step would be either request a merge with F-16 or take it to AfD. Any opinions please. MilborneOne (talk) 14:39, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree with you that at best this should be a paragraph in the F-16 article - I would recommend merging it into the F-16 article and making Lethal Lady a simple redirect. - Ahunt (talk) 14:47, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

It's not particularly notable. I'd actually just delete it unless it's vastly exceeding the expected hours for the airframe. SDY (talk) 16:40, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

SDY, think about what you're saying. It would be extremely dangerous to "vastly exceeding the expected hours for the airframe". For very good reasons aircraft are given a finite life and to exceed that life risks structural failure.Petebutt (talk) 10

46, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Aircraft specifications: More parameters

A user has just introduced a couple of new parameters to {{aircraft specifications}} – lift-to-drag ratio and fuel consumption. Since these belong to a level of detail that are inconsistent with what one would expect to find in an encyclopedia article describing an aircraft type, I removed them, asking that s/he get consensus here first, but s/he simply reverted the edit.

Can anyone recall seeing these specifications reported in an encyclopedia or encyclopedia-type work? --Rlandmann (talk) 20:00, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

I have to agree with you about being to detailed they dont appear in the general works I have. Not sure how you could reliably measure fuel consumption with so many different variables. I would suggest they are not needed. MilborneOne (talk) 20:07, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

(e/c) I'm not used to seeing them as a "table" type of data, only in discussion. Both vary widely depending on how the plane is used. "Lift-to-drag ratio and fuel consumption at cruising speed and altitude" might be of interest, particularly fuel consumption for airliners, but they would have to be caveated (not a word) to specific conditions of use. Reheat kinda changes fuel consumption... SDY (talk) 20:10, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

They're just supposed to give you a general idea about the aircraft, and they, like everything else in the wikipedia are supposed to be referenced to a reputable source.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 04:01, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Can't say I've seen either in a spec listing in any books or magazines. But lift to drag seems reasonable and might could be used by gliders and powered gliders. In any event the more general/more performance fields in the template can handle these extra specs as needed. -Fnlayson (talk) 20:11, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Nah. If you don't at least have the attribute then it will be added inconsistently throughout the wikipedia. Then it's harder to find, and you can't decide policy centrally. There's a difference between having the attribute and whether it appears or not. You're claiming it's a good idea to have it and have no central control over it.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 04:01, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

The two new fields do seem rather OTT - they are not the sort of thing normally listed in specifications for most of the aircraft we have articles for, even in references like Jane's All the World's Aircraft. They are also the sort of data that as SDT says would need to be very heavily caveated (for example at what weight, at what speed etc).Nigel Ish (talk) 20:47, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

None of this discussion makes much sense to me. There was already maybe two dozen or more articles that listed lift to drag ratios in their tables, and I found a few also that listed fuel consumption, and I wasn't really looking. And all I did was add optional parameters to simplify the markup; the articles already had it. Some notable aircraft have interesting L/D ratios, like Concorde, some of the fighters, Valkyrie etc. etc. I even found that the Cessna 150 had an unusually low L/D. I must stress that it's an optional parameter and not one that we would be insisting or expecting people to add to most articles.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 21:56, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

The problem is that these aren't constant values, and if we're reporting them in the specs, they have to be listed with the conditions where they apply. I don't know if there's a standard way of expressing this that's used for comparison in aviation, but I don't see how it can be cut down to a single number when it isn't given in a consistent and rigorously defined context. MTOW and other parameters listed have robust definitions and when people are comparing an A380 and a SPAD they have some comfort that they are comparing apples and apples. SDY (talk) 22:12, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

It's called a 'reference' isn't it? If the reference is any good it will specify conditions. And if the editor is any good he will copy them into the article.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 04:01, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Well there are tons of specs that you could add, but those are POH type items and not found in general references books, so unlikely to be completed by anyone who doesn't have the POH handy. Too much detail for an encyclopedia, I say remove them. - Ahunt (talk) 23:06, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

If you think this, then I'm seriously asking when you intend to remove the table in lift-to-drag ratio. After all, that kind of information is only found in POH right? And nobody could ever want to know it otherwise? Are you going to AFD the article or shall I???? p.s. where do I find the POH of a tern? ;-)- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 04:01, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Could someone explain what a POH is in passing? Wiki-standard is to spell out first and abbreviate thereafter. GraemeLeggett (talk) 10:51, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

Pilot's Operating Handbook --Rlandmann (talk) 11:00, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

(undent) @Wolfkeeper: No-one is saying that this information is only found in POHs, nor that it should never be referred to in an article. And of course, an article on Lift-to-drag ratio really ought to provide exactly the sort of table that Wikipedia's does, in order to provide context and illustrate what the range of values means in practical terms.

Well, so now you're only quibbling about whether it should be allowed in the specifications section or not. But you're not planning on banning it either are you?- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 04:26, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

What's under discussion here is whether this is the kind of information that should form part of the specifications section in an encyclopedia article about an aircraft type. There seems to be a strong consensus here that it isn't. Do you know of any encyclopedia of aircraft that includes L/D or fuel consumption when providing aircraft specifications? (BTW - that's a genuine request for information, not sarcasm or rhetoric) --Rlandmann (talk) 11:08, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I don't even see that that's an interesting question; the wikipedia is shaping up to being more comprehensive than all of the other encyclopedias put together- you would expect and demand that it does have more and more varied information.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 04:26, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

And... I just don't see where you're coming from at all. How is that that you think it's perfectly OK to list, say, the height of the aircraft, which let's face it is almost a completely useless fact to know, whereas a rough L/D ratio is actually a parameter that tells you something about the way the vehicle actually flies; you could use it to estimate the way the range varies with different loadings and so forth. It's actually useful and meaningful. If I look at a Cessna 150 and it has an L/D of 7 then I instantly know it's a relatively expensive way to get around, but if it's 15ft to the top of the tail, so what?- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 04:26, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I mean, I could understand all this if this was a parameter about the number of door catches on the plane, or maybe even the number of doors, but this is a major performance parameter we're talking about.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 04:26, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

You're correct – I'm not saying that these specifications should never be reported. I am saying that this is not the kind of information that belongs in a specifications summary for an encyclopedia article about an aircraft. Knowing what to leave out is just as important as knowing what to put in, and we take our guidance from other encyclopedias of aircraft. In such works, height is regularly reported, and L/D and fuel consumption never are (in any example I've ever seen, anyway). Indeed, neither of the two encyclopedias of sailplanes I own report L/D.

Words fail me. The general policy of principle here is that Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, your argument is that it should be. You're not arguing that we've run out of space in an article, or that it makes articles too long. No, your argument is that the wikipedia is a paper encyclopedia. It isn't.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 16:21, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

There are many performance characteristics and physical dimensions that have a direct and vital impact on the operation of an aircraft – the area of the control surfaces and their maximum deflections spring to mind. But these aren't encyclopedic (unless they're unusual and remarkable for some reason).

But that's my point, this parameter is only used where it is unusual and remarkable. It's an optional parameter.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 16:21, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Bear in mind that we're not writing neither handbooks nor monographs on these aircraft; we're writing encyclopedia articles - a different genre of non-fiction entirely. The object is to present the most important information about a subject in a concise, uncluttered way. An encyclopedia article is the first word on a subject, not the last, and when we lower the signal-to-noise ratio, we defeat that purpose. --Rlandmann (talk) 11:10, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Your point about handbooks or monographs is completely wrong. A handbook or monograph would probably have a graph showing curves of values in different situations. We're only quoting one or two values in cruise or whatever and only then if we can reference it.- (User) Wolfkeeper (Talk) 16:21, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia. On the other hand, the writers and editors of paper encyclopedias in some way have an easier job in that the motivation to be concise and to stick to the most relevant data for their audience is made more immediately tangible. That being said, I don't accept your implicit argument that the only reason these figures aren't included in paper encyclopedias is because of issues of space. I agree that L/D is a more significant detail to the operation of an aircraft than its physical height is; however, just about every encyclopedia of aircraft I've come across provides data for height, and none provide L/D. This indicates editorial choice, and more indirectly, audience expectations. We're not out to re-invent the wheel here.

I don't see anyone here disagreeing that these figures shouldn't be mentioned if there's something remarkable to say about them. All we're saying is that the specifications summary is not the place to do it.

Yes, a handbook may have graphs for these particular values; but even monographs on particular types seldom mention L/D. It's simply too esoteric a piece of data to include in a specifications summary in a reference work for a general audience. --Rlandmann (talk) 19:23, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Daft list

The user who created the redlink aircraft redirects back to Slingsby has now created this List of A1 aircrafts. Apart from the bad english it is obviously created by somebody with little knowledge of aircraft designations. Any suggestions before he/she does the rest of the alphabet. MilborneOne (talk) 23:20, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Aargh! user has created redirects A1 aircraft, A-1 aircraft, A1 (aircraft), A-1 (aircraft), A1 (glider), A-1 (glider), A1 glider, A-1 glider to the new list, need to go and lie down. MilborneOne (talk) 23:27, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

My opinion - that should be made a redirect to A1 and the contents moved to that disambiguation page. - Ahunt (talk) 23:32, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I wonder if A2 would be next?! He needs to be told politely to stop unfortunately. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 23:33, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Actually his list isn't that awful, even if it is rather pointless and it is listed as a sub disambiguation page from A1. I moved it to List of A1 aircraft however - couldn't stand the grammar! - Ahunt (talk) 23:44, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I fixed all the double redirects. Having re-looked at it I now say leave it. It is just a disambiguation page. it doesn't serve much purpose, but it doesn't do much harm. If someone needs to put a real article where one of those redirects is then just go ahead and do so. My two cents worth. - Ahunt (talk) 23:52, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) User:Nono64 has been doing a LOT of work creating and correcting DAB pages in the last few months. Mostly, he has been making DAB pages for things like A1, B1, etc. It appears he's trying to make sure these designations will lead to roadway/highway articles, instead of a varying set of articles, including aircraft and tanks. I've had to do some clean up behind him, such as making sure the [[F-14, F-16 designations go to the primary aircraft topics when necessary, while leaving F14, F16, and so on as the DAB pages. He has yet to communicate with me directly or on an associated talk page, but he's almost always left my changes alone. I think having one of our more "diplomatic" members speak to him about unnecessary redirects and the usefulness of redlinks will probably have a desired effect, maybe more so if someone can speak to him in his language (French, I think - do any of our Canadian members speak French?). It seems apparent that he created the List of A1 aircraft simply because of its length, and the fact that is must have overwhelmed the A1 DAB page! However, I don't think we need to list the "A-1" variants of other designation types. This would be like listing all the "A"-variants in the US DOD designations - A-1A, A-2A, C-1A, C-2A, F-1A, F-2A, and so on - and that weuld be a very long list! (Hopefully he's not going to do that one!) Thanks. - BillCJ (talk) 02:01, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

British Aircraft Directory

The British Aircraft Directory website [9] appears to have gone offline and has been offline for a few days now. It is used frequently as an external link for British aircraft types (particularly the more obscure ones) and occasionally as a reference. We may need to see if we can find replacements for where it is used as a reference.Nigel Ish (talk) 18:35, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Since the site doesn't appear to qualify as reliable, instances where it's been used as a reference should be replaced if possible in any case. The domain is still registered - maybe the owner has just not paid his hosting fee or has exceeded his bandwidth allowance? We should probably wait at least a couple of weeks before starting to remove External links. After that time, instances were it's been used as a reference and which can't be quickly replaced might be redirected to pages in the archived version of the site. --Rlandmann (talk) 19:18, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Its still offline, so I thinbk that we probably should be doing something about it now. I've already made a start in trying to replace where it has been used as a reference, but a lot more needs to be done. A list of the 1st ~120 of 350+ calls to British Aircraft directory is here. Nigel Ish (talk) 13:48, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

References

Just had a look at Boeing 777 which is trying for featured article status, the page has over 100 references, sometimes two for the same sentence. Do we really need so many references or is it just a featured article thing, it appears references are needed for everything rather than just things liable to be challenged. The editors who tweak these article for FA status are doing good work but the result is an ugly and hard to read article. This is just a rant no need for a reply! MilborneOne (talk) 13:10, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Sorry - couldn't help responding! I think that references are a good thing, but I agree that having them at the end of sentences within a paragraph or even within a sentence detracts from readability. To deal with this I have moved all the refs to the end of each paragraph. I did this in Gmail, Gmail interface & History of Gmail a series of software articles. This improves the readability greatly. without sacrificing the refs and, as bonus, makes the paragraphs easier to edit, since you can actually find the text in the sea of embedded refs. The only two drawbacks are that the ref is now no longer right next to the data or text that it supports and it is easier for editors to change the text so it contradicts the ref. Also if someone splits a paragraph into two then the refs have to be re-aligned so they reference the new paragraphs properly. Overall I think doing this is worth the effort and in the Gmail series no one has complained yet. - Ahunt (talk) 13:37, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

I dont have a problem with referencing when needed but some articles are referencing every sentence which makes it hard to read. Gmail look a lot better for moving the refs to the end. MilborneOne (talk) 16:54, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

I find the cite templates to be clunky and take up more space. This is especially true when there is one field per line. Footnotes and repeating ref names make editing much easier. -Fnlayson (talk) 18:30, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree, it does appear that we have to reference every little statement nowadays where the guidelines say something like 'facts that are contentious or likely to be challenged', there has got to be a better way of doing it. Maybe some kind of software gadget that allows the reader to hide the cites or not. Why do we use cites in the lead paragraphs which are summaries of (hopefully) referenced text in the body? Is it because a lot of editors don't get past the lead before challenging something on the talk page? Cheers Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 21:50, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Is anyone reading the articles we write and edit?

I have often wondered if we are just writing for ourselves or if anyone is actually reading the stuff we write in Wikipedia. Maybe everyone else already knows about this but monthly and daily pages view stats are now available for Wikipedia. This webpage lists the top 1000 pages in order of views. The highest listed aircraft article seems to be F-22 Raptor at #994 with 5,784 hits per day! You can also use the search at the very bottom of that page to check the stats on any Wikipedia page. For instance Cessna 172 was viewed 27606 times in the month of November. You can even check user pages - my own user page was viewed 568 times in November. If nothing else the high number of views should at least provide some motivation! - Ahunt (talk) 13:47, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. People are looking at the pages anyway. ;) -Fnlayson (talk) 14:22, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

... and do not forget that lots of your works are adopted from many other languages Wikis as a base for their own articles (and credits are reported with proper GFDL templates). So add other languages visits to your counts. Thank you all. --EH101 (talk) 14:52, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

I saw an interesting discussion in a forum on a motorcycle article that I created a while ago. I got the impression that they thought WP was an organisation or company rather than a team of volunteer people. It's probably true that some articles on here don't get 'aired' very often. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 21:55, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Nimbus: Well even your own user page got 223 hits in November! It seems in checking that even the most obscure user pages get some hits! Better buck up, eh - the public is reading what we write! - Ahunt (talk) 00:50, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

• Yep, I've had a sandbox or two of mine show up at the top on internet searches. That's not helping me. ;) -Fnlayson (talk) 00:58, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

They were probably wanting to know who this idiot was or maybe it was one fan visiting 223 times! Interesting stuff. I fear for the future now that the bulk of 'notable' articles have been written and we start to examine in microscopic detail what we have already. The recent 'push' on aircraft engine articles though illustrated that there are plenty of articles here worthy of half an hour of attention and the improvement is very noticeable. My 11 year old son reads WP for several hours a day believing everything that he sees (he probably wonders what all the little numbers are for), in the case of the aircraft articles I am happy that he is getting the straight facts (mostly!), not so sure about some of the other articles though. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 01:41, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Well the stats show people are reading them, so my policy is that if the articles aren't good then fix them, or at least tag them so readers will know there are problems with them! - Ahunt (talk) 13:03, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

(Undent) Check out Wikipedia:WikiProject Aviation/Popular pages - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 09:44, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Order of lists

User:Nimbus227 ordered the list of aircraft applications in General Electric J85 in order of article names (A-37 Dragonfly, Canadair CL-41 Tutor etc) I re-ordered it in alphabetic order as Canadair CL-41 Tutor, Cessna A-37 Dragonfly etc) as the list looked daft with a mixture of US designations and real names. Nimbus asks if we should use piped links in this way but I am not aware of any consensus. Should we ignore the fact that US military articles have a different naming convention when it comes to lists or place them in alphabetical order by manufactures name. Any opinions please. Thanks. MilborneOne (talk) 10:39, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

I think it looks good the way he has done it. If you want to use the unpiped article names (ie actual article names) then it will look more inconsistent. - Ahunt (talk) 12:41, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Concur – this is exactly the kind of things that pipes are for! --Rlandmann (talk) 19:29, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Spitfire Image

I wonder if anybody can help I recently tagged an image for deletion of a spitfire from the Supermarine Spitfire, it was sourced from http://www.afhra.af.mil/shared/media/photodb/photos/080306-f-3927A-031.jpg which according to the uploader makes it a USAF image and public domain. I found a copy of the image in Alfred Price's The Spitfire Story Page 188 where it is credited to Charles E. Brown (whose image collection is now with (and copyright the RAF Museum). The image has been deleted but the uploader User:Signaleer is a bit miffed because I cant find a websource he can read and infers I made up the book reference to get the image deleted (although I have better thing to do!) Appreciate if anybody has The Spitfire Story to just give me a sanity check or indeed any other references. Or tell me I am wrong and anything on a .gov or .mil site must be public domain (although the AF Historic Research Agency website make no mention of images sources or copyright). Thanks. MilborneOne (talk) 07:33, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Milb1, I know some people seem to think that anything on a US government website is PD, but as understand it that is not necessarily so. Usually the websites with copyrighted images have a disclaimer somewhere on the site, if not necessarily the image info page itself. Today, an editor left this edit summary about the Great JSF Image Deletions: "remove the rest since the bot will delete them as well. All are in the same boat, contractor made images released on a DoD server. Commons admins think they are copyrightd." I think you helped bring me bring those up for deletion on Commons, as the JSF site clearly says that some of the images are property of others. Btw, Signaleer has been known to be a bit agressive at times, but I'm sure his opinion on this is in good faith. - BillCJ (talk) 07:54, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm not seeing anything in that particular AF site about who owns which images. Nothing on the disclaimer page. That Spitfire image just has the caption British Spitfire banks in clouds. -Fnlayson (talk) 07:59, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Milb1, there are contact forms on the AF Historic Research Agency website. Have you considered contacting them with your concerns about the Spitfire image? Perhaps they are using it with permission, or they may be unawre of its possible copyright status. It wouldn't hurt, anyway, ad if the image turns out to be usable, then good! - BillCJ (talk) 09:59, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Good idea BillCJ message sent. MilborneOne (talk) 10:45, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Infobox Aircraft replacement

As most of you have probably noticed, Anomiebot recently finished its job of implementing the new, modular Infobox right across the project. Today, I disabled the old box to avoid situations where it would have re-forked articlespace, since this was already starting to happen.

Around 70 articles transcluding the original infobox remain scattered throughout various sandboxes – these will now appear to be obviously broken.

The conversion is very easy:

1. change the first line of the template from {{Infobox Aircraft to {|{{Infobox Aircraft Begin
2. insert a new line after name/image/caption parameters that says }}{{Infobox Aircraft Type
3. add a new line to the end of the template that just contains |}

You can see an example of this here.

If you get stuck for some reason, just take a look at any of the 4,000-odd articles that are now using it! Or just drop me a note and I'll be all too happy to help. Cheers --Rlandmann (talk) 21:10, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice. There's a couple related templates {{Infobox Aircraft/all}} and {{Install Infobox Aircraft}} that may need something done with too. -Fnlayson (talk) 21:55, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Fnlayson – Born2flie beat me to the Install template by seconds (thanks, B2f!) and I've moved the other to {{Infobox Spacecraft Type}} since that's what it's actually being used for! On that note, the Mercury and Gemini pages currently use old hard-coded tables and could probably do with a little love from an interested party in conjunction with the relevant WikiProject (WikiProject Human spaceflight, I guess). --Rlandmann (talk) 23:26, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

No problem, you beat me here to say that I finished! :D --Born2flie (talk) 23:50, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Height (and length?)

The standard specs template comes with a link for "span". That's fine, though I suspect most folk who look at these pages will know what it is. Also, it is easy to define and unlikely to be wrongly measured. However, what about height? I'd not thought much about it until getting into the project; probably would have guessed it was the same as clearance, so if the hanger door lintel is higher, let's go in. For an aircraft with a tricycle undercarriage, this will do: it's in its flight position and the highest point is probably well defined, though the changing height of rotating airscrews might give us pause. For a tail wheel aircraft the difference between clearance and height in the flying position can be large. Jackson, in the introduction to his British Civil Aircraft 1919-59 worries about it: it is, he say the "agreed figure [?].... and is assumed to be measured with the aircraft in the rigging position." What, exactly is that and how reproduceible is it? It must be roughly the flying position, I guess. He notes that it is hard to be sure that the measurement has been done this way, and that also it may depend on propeller position, tyre pressures and the fuel and other load aboard (the latter apply to tricycles too).

There may be smaller flight/standing position differences in the length too, but my impression that it is heights reported by different, typically reliable sources that vary most. Maybe "height" should have link to an article that attempts to describe the ideal measurement, if we agree with Jackson on this, warn of the difficulties but reassure readers that they should not be surprised or distressed by differences in this parameter.TSRL (talk) 20:35, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes – the rigging position for a taildragger is roughly its flying position, with its tail raised on trestles. It's really beyond our scope to agree with Jackson or not – our sources rarely (if ever) tell us how height (or many other parameters) were measured. All we can do is accept the figures published by others, and reference where they came from. --Rlandmann (talk) 19:25, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the note on the rigging position. I probably wasn't quite clear with my reference to Jackson, who is very cautious about height, rightly so; and would have ruefully agreed totally with your last comment. We don't have to agree with his definition, but should, I think offer one suggestion, an idea of what height might mean here, with a health warning to readers. As I said, if we need a discussion on span, then how much more so on height?TSRL (talk) 21:19, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Aero engine article images

Many of the aero engine articles do not yet have images of the engines. A few of the articles that do not have engine images do have images of an aircraft or two that use said engines. (the engines themsevles are not usually visible, just the nacalles coverings, etc.) So, do we want to add images of aircraft to all the engine articles that lack engine images? Further, do we want to add aircraft images to longer articles that have one or two engine images, but plenty of text sections with no images. I would think such aircraft images need to be shots which show the engine nacalles, nose installation, or the tail with the engine exhaust. I'm really not opposed to having non-engine images of aircraft in these articles, but I am fearful of users adding too many images of aircraft to these articles, which are generally very short, either in the text area or in galleries. - BillCJ (talk) 07:50, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Absent good pix of the engines themselves, which would be my preference, I'd say a sample pic of a using aircraft, preferably the best-known or most-used, would suit. In the case of the Merlin (say), a Spit; for the R2800, a F4U (maybe a Jug); in cases of less common or familiar engines, in particular the Russian or Japanese ones of WW2, a sample aircraft might be the only option, unless (until?) we can get something better. TREKphiler ^{hit me ♠} 08:09, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I'd say that a general image of an aircraft that used the engine in question is almost completely valueless - the engine article should link to the aircraft that used it, and that's the place for a picture of the aircraft. A photo of an engine enclosed in a nacelle/nose installation or a jetpipe might be of value where there's no reasonable chance of finding or creating a free image perhaps. --Rlandmann (talk) 08:10, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Bill has highlighted a 'problem' that I have also noticed. In the Rolls-Royce RB108 article all we have is a profile drawing of an aircraft that used the engine, which is a bit of a tenuous link. It would be better perhaps if there was no image at all, showing that the article needs one. There are images available in books which could be scanned and uploaded as 'non-free' but the process is not that easy with many 'good faith' images being deleted because the 't's were not crossed properly in the licence template. I have got a few photos of cowlings with propellers attached to them and chose not to use them, I think it would be 'short changing' the reader. Things will improve over time (as they have done this year), there are a few museums that I would like to visit that have engines we don't yet have images for, just a matter of time and opportunity before I can get to them. In the longer articles I think it is ok to use an aircraft image in the application section but I would use one of the lesser known types. In some of the articles I have added external links to images which is sort of saying 'there are images out there but we can't use them'. There are older engines where it's possible that no image will ever be available. Maybe I could try some 'non-free, fair use' image uploads and see if they get left alone. Cheers Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 08:52, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

I've uploaded a non-free fair use image to the Armstrong Siddeley Panther article in good faith, I hope that I got the licensing and rationale correct, there is no option for 'objects' in the drop down list on the image upload page, I used 'historically significant'. If it is allowed to stay I might try to improve the resolution of this one and hopefully add more images, will see. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 09:42, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

I think we need to make a concerted effort to get actual engine photos, where possible. The Canada Aviation Museum is near where I live and has a good collection of rare engines, although they are not listed on their website for some reason. I'll see if I can get some photographs in the near future. - Ahunt (talk) 12:55, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, guys, that's a good wide sample of opinions. So far the consensus seems to be to use only engine images except in rare cases. We'll see if we get any other opinons here. - BillCJ (talk) 21:25, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps it should be like Pratt & Whitney Canada PW100 an uncowled naked engine and a close-up of a mounted and cowled engine only. I would suggest the cowled image is the only image of an aircraft that is needed. MilborneOne (talk) 21:49, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Aero engine task force

In recent months, several editors - especially Ahunt, Milb1, Nimbus, and myself - have been working to create and expand articles on aero engines and their manufacturers. One of the problems were are facing is that there are no page content and other guidelines specifically for aero engine articles. Some of the articles try to follow the outline for aircraft ariticles, while others follow their own pattern, or even have no real outline at all. This makes it especially dificult when trying to improve an article, as sometimes I'm uncertain what to change.

In order to address this and other issues involved in aero engine articles, I'd like to propose starting an Aero (or Aircraft) Engines task force or workgroup. This would basically be a workgroup to discuss and form guidelines for aircraft engine articles, and for dealing with issues specific to these article, without taking up space on this talk page or on WT:AVIATION. Final proposals could then be proposed here if a wider input or consensus is needed. Perhaps it could simply be a talk page on WP:AIR userspace to deal with forming the page content guidelines. Either way, I think this will be a very long and drawn out discussion, and many WP:AIR editors would probably rather not see such a lengthy discussion here.

Thoughts? - BillCJ (talk) 21:25, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Good idea BillCJ it might give us more focus on aero-engines which we have neglected until recently. MilborneOne (talk)

Yes, all for that. There is plenty of work to do, I certainly have a much better overview of the engine articles now and have plenty of good references available plus the ones we have discovered online. Agree with your revert and edit summaries on the navbox templates BTW Bill, was not feeling very bold this morning to fix it. I have personally tried to stick close to the aircraft page content layout for consistency, the only extra or different section seems to be 'applications'. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 22:20, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like a fine idea. intructions for setting up a task force can be found here. - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 01:15, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Eek! Hopefully someone will volunteer to set all that up for us - it's a bit beyond me right now! Nimbus, I agree that sticking close to the aircraft page layout would be best, but I also think we should "review" some to the other styles used in the engine articles to see if someone else had a good idea we could incorporate into the new guidelines. - BillCJ (talk) 01:47, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Double Eek! Yes it does look complicated and perhaps designed to put off the faint hearted! I know that some task forces have fallen by the wayside but I don't believe that this one would. Can it all be set up in a sandbox? We could easily cut/paste/modify the existing aircraft article page content guidelines to suit. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 02:30, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Just an idea - but do we really need a full-fledged taskforce, given the complexity of it? Perhaps if we just wrote an engine article page guideline and then critiqued it on the talk page that would accomplish the aim quicker and with less administration required? - Ahunt (talk) 12:01, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Or add some text to the existing page content tab to cover engine articles or create a new page content tab for the engines. If we went that way we could move this discussion to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Aircraft/page content. Could we set up a separate engine talk page if we needed to? Would other aircraft project editors object to engine talk remaining on this page? It's all aircraft related so not strictly off-topic and it does get archived regularly. Just a few thoughts and variables. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 12:22, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

I just had a look at the scope of the aircraft project at WP:AIR and it does say 'aircraft engines' and 'aircraft engine technology'. We do need some page content guidelines including the slightly different way of using images as discussed above. There is an unused talk page at Category:Aircraft engines but this is not necessarily the best place for engine related discussion. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 12:48, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

(Unindent) I'm fine if this is not a full-fledged Task Force, which is why I also used the term "work group". I'm open to any talk page on WPAIR project space that we can discuss the issues related to the engine articles, even if it's just subpage. And yes, aircraft engines are within the scope of WPAIR, which is why I raised this issue here, and not at WPAVIATION. I do believe the guidelines for aeroengines should be part of the existing WP:AIR/PC, perhaps as a subpage, meaning we could use the talk page of the subpage for our initial discussions. Any options along that line, Trevor? - BillCJ (talk) 17:25, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

If you're not looking for a group with (semi-) formalised membership, then how about Wikipedia:WikiProject Aircraft/Engines to hold the guidelines, with discussion taking place on its talk page? --Rlandmann (talk) 20:04, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

The consensus so far seems to be leaning twoards an informal group right now. We can always formalize it later on if we need to. I was reminded today of another issue whne I visited the Daimler-Benz DB 600 page: it has a "Comparable Engines" section - complete with flags! - between the specs and applications sections. Getting rid of the flags is a no-brainer, but I'm also certain we don't want such a section in the main portion of the article. So what about the "See also section? Do we want to just list them there, or perhaps use the "Aircontent" template (modified or a new one)? - BillCJ (talk) 20:33, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

I created a template {{Aeroenginecontent}} a while ago which was a bit of a bodge of the 'aircontent' one, have not used it in many articles yet, it is in use here [10]. How can we make that redlink page go live and where or how would it appear, as a tab on the aircraft project page? I'm sure we are moving in the right direction. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 00:17, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

In the meantime I would be quite happy to have my talk page 'clogged' with engine talk. The whole category of BMW aircraft engine articles got a look through tonight and quite an improvement IMO in just three hours. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 03:30, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Good job on those, Gary! We can esily create Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Aircraft/Engines by just starting a discussion there. Trevor or RL can probably add some apropriate tags and links for us elsewhere. If we chose another title later on, the talk page should be able to be moved there quite easily. With permission, I can copy or move this discussion there to get things started. - BillCJ (talk) 03:57, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Great! Still not sure where this new page will appear exactly, will find out soon enough. Go for it. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 04:33, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

The Rotorcraft task force has always been mostly informal, the creation of the task force page was relatively simple, and the page has simply grown with Trevor's implementation of the MILHIST tracking templates for WPAVIATION articles. However, the more simpler task force implementation suggested by the WikiProject Council is much simpler to initiate and meets the intent that you have been discussing here. This will also give people a place to discuss other than an engine-related content page or a category talk page.

A task force is, essentially, a non-independent subgroup of a larger WikiProject that covers some defined part of the WikiProject's scope. For example, the United States military history task force of the Military history WikiProject deals with the military history of a specific country; and the Warcraft task force of the Video games WikiProject covers a single game series.

— WikiProject Council, Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Guide/Task forces

All the tasks that are in the WPAVIATION Coordinator's Handbook can be implemented over time. In the meantime, a sandbox article example of what a task force page would look like is at User:Born2flie/Engine task force. So, setting up a task force isn't hard, whereas tying it into the elaborate article tracking scheme of WPAVIATION is. --Born2flie (talk) 11:55, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

For now, I've actioned BillCJ's request on my talk page and created a tabbed page within the main project here. --Rlandmann (talk) 21:13, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Similar aircraft and generations

Just to note that I have removed the similar/comparable lists on HAL Tejas, JF-17 Thunder and Chengdu J-10 as these appear to attract an almost daily change or revert. I have used the grounds of no consensus because of the regular change. Also note I have removed mention of aircraft generations from the Tejas and JF-17 to stop regular edit wars and reverts. A bit drastic but has anybody any comment on the action, support or otherwise. MilborneOne (talk) 19:51, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Good move! - Ahunt (talk) 19:58, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

I have desperately searched the interwebnet for anything approaching a reliable source for this "generations" stuff, which appears to be primarily marketing jibbajabba to compare fighter aircraft. There is some logic to it, notably in the US and Soviet Cold War designs where there are obvious counterparts that followed similar design principles, but applying it to anything else is either WP:OR or based on unreliable sources (from fansites to advertising). "Proving" that the Tejas is 4.5th generation (or 4th generation) appears to be a matter of pride to some people, and I can only guess that someone has already added their perception of the WP:TRUTH back by now. SDY (talk) 20:09, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Scope of "Glider"

What should the scope of the "Glider" article be? Input needed here. --Rlandmann (talk) 20:40, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Designers of Aircraft

Hi, the Template:Infobox Aircraft Type has the "designer" parameter, for which the documentation says- "The person or persons who designed the aircraft. Only appropriate for single designers, not project leaders".

Unfortunately, this sort of classification is not appropriate given given today's aircraft design methodology (unlike in WW2 and before, where the groups were relatively small, and there was an extremely clear head designer), there are no fewer than a 1000 design engineers working on an aircraft, and no clear individual responsible for the project. This becomes more acute when you look at non-US designs, where the productionizing company may not be the one designing the aircraft. For eg, in India, ADA or NAL designs the aircraft, and HAL produces it. IMO, this is a very US-centric classification, and needs to be changed. Plus, given the present design methods, a single designer like in WW2 will not be suitable.

The question is how we can change this classification or the parameter definition - would it be better to talk about the design team/company (eg. Aeronautical Development Agency or Lockheed Skunk Works??). How do we reconcile these?? Cheers. Sniperz11_@^CS 10:39, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Generally, the "Designer" field is simply not used at all, with the single designers being the exeption, not the rule. I actually brought up the issue of expanding the field to cover companies, such as the Soviet-era desing bureaus, but there was no clear consensus to change the way the field is currently used. Btw, most WW2 era aircraft should not have this field filled in, as the persons listed were generally project leaders. - BillCJ (talk) 11:00, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

That may be true for large commercial or military aircraft, but even today in the field of kit plane design most aircraft are still designed by one person. Examples of this include the series of Van's Aircraft designs by Richard VanGrunsven and the Sonex Aircraft series by John Monnett. This box field is still useful and relevant as is it currently set out as there are far more kit planes in production (over 700) than certified aircraft today. - Ahunt (talk) 13:22, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

It's also worth bearing in mind that the majority of aircraft ever designed (and the majority of aircraft that we cover) were also not produced under today's design methodology! :) --13:25, 20 December 2008 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by User:Rlandmann (talk)

True enough Rlandmann, and that was a point that I raised in my query. The question is how can we include the design team/Company in the template? Can it be done under the "designer=" parameter, or does it need a new parameter (if as BillCJ has pointed out, there hasn't been consensus reached). having the single designer parameter may be good for the kit-planes but we should also have a way to accommodate aircraft under today's methodology as well... how shall we do that is my question. I'm not really comfortable with excluding the design company/team, given the Design Bureaus of Soviet times, and aircraft like the HAL Tejas today.... Cheers. Sniperz11_@^CS 04:04, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

A little help here!

Hi guys... working on a new deck of cards I just bought. Was wondering if anyone could help format the new article Scout/Wasp. Cheers. --CyclePat (talk) 05:53, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Looks like those aircraft already have articles at Westland Scout and Westland Wasp. These did Not turn up with wikipedia searches. The names seemed familiar from working on other Westland Aircraft articles. -Fnlayson (talk) 07:04, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Both Westland Scout and Westland Wasp in the search box bring up the relevant article. And both are link from Scout and Wasp dab pages. MilborneOne (talk) 13:01, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

• I searched for Wasp, Scout, Wasp aircraft, Scout aircraft, etc with no luck. I did not know at first they were Westland's aircraft. Wikipedia's search feature is horrible. -Fnlayson (talk) 15:50, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Those should all be redirects or disambiguation pages! - Ahunt (talk) 16:07, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

"Scout helicopter" brings the Westland one at no. 8GraemeLeggett (talk) 16:29, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Not sure what CyclePat is trying to do but it appears to be a complicated non-standard way of adding a reference. It appears that his study cards only cover 55 aircraft so I am not sure why they should be any more important than the reliable sources already used. Also dont think adding a link to his/her own user page to do list is allowed. MilborneOne (talk) 13:16, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me that this is a good-faith, if mis-guided effort to be WP:BOLD. The military published a deck of cards with aircraft silhouettes and basic data to help their folks become better spotters, and if I understand it right, what CyclePat is trying to do is make it so that the ref note will have a link to a scan of the card. In concept, it's an intriguing idea, since readers can check you web refs, but not hard copy refs; this way they can actually see the hard copy ref. Again, if I understand things right, he's in the middle of the process that makes this happen, and the link to his user space is temporary. I have a bit of a concern about linking to user space from an article, even if it is temporary, so if the Project likes the concept of a viewable hard copy ref, maybe we can invite him to move his template out of his user space and into project space? AKRadecki^Speaketh 16:34, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Either that or perhaps they are already posted on the web somewhere? I gather they are US govt and therefore PD? - Ahunt (talk) 16:37, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

• Should be. CyclePat's cite list Department of the Navy as the publisher. -Fnlayson (talk) 16:40, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) Well that back fired a little, considering there is a template now to delete the article on Scout/Wasp. First off, I obviously disagree with deletion of the article (it should maybe be merged but first I think have a few points to clarify. ie.: What is the aircraf and is it the same as the 2 aformentioned helicopters? Do the minor discrepencies have anything to do with this perhaps being a different aircraft? (asside: I also disagree with the way it's being deleted but, again Wikipedia is a concensus thing, so in short we should come to a concensus... and I believe the editor here should have the best experience to way in on this decision.) Hypothesis: I believe the Scout/Wasp may be a mix of both. Point 1: I see a relationship between the Scout/Wasp and the Westland Scout which have similar look and some similar statistic however I have some doubts (and so should you)(which I have highlighted in red text with a yellow background) which leads me to believe in my hypothesis (this may be a different aircraft). ie.:

The Scout/Wasp vs. WASP HAS.1

Device name	Rotorspan (meters)	Speed (knots)	Fuselage lenght (meters)	Range (km)
Scout/Wasp	10 m	100 Knots	9 m	435 km
WASP HAS.1	9.83 m	104 Knots	12.29 m	488 km
Westland Scout	9.83 m	113 Knots	9.25 m	510 km
	Average:	105.7 Knots

Because of this, please take note that I don't necessarily agree with the the current reverted in the dissambiguation page of Scout... this edit by MilborneOne.

No mater the case. I think we could merge this information into the Westland Wasp article. It should not be deleted because it presents a valid POV which is held by a reliable source (the US army themself).

As for my reference methodology... I have stated on User_talk:Akradecki that I believe this is conform to wikipedia policies even in light of the userpage policy which, I believe, was written to dither users to link to their userpage with full articles or material which would otherwise be deleted because it lacks notability or WP:NPOV rules for a regular article. I believe it does not apply to the references in this case which are being transclusioned for formating purposes. Best regards! p.s.; Someone had also suggest wikisource? Or even wikiproject? (I didn't really think this could be a wikiproject because I believe I'm simply following the rules for verifiability. ;) --CyclePat (talk) 19:04, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Just to make it clear to CyclePat the Scout and the Wasp are related it is the same fuselage, one has wheels and one has skids but there is no such thing as a Scout/Wasp it is just shorthand by the creators of the cards. I suspect looking at the figures you qoute from the cards that they are probably not a reliable source as the figures appear to be rounded and not particularly accurate. The United States Navy is not an expert on foreign helicopters and we have far more reliable British sources. Still dont understand why the information cant just be referenced like any other data we use although I would move they dont look to be that reliable or usable. MilborneOne (talk) 19:40, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

I think it may be a case of a shorthand form meaning "Westland Scout/Westland Wasp" being misinterpreted.GraemeLeggett (talk) 19:51, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Probably not a shorthand use outside of the US Navy!

MilborneOne (talk) 19:55, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

"Hypothesis: I believe the Scout/Wasp may be a mix of both" – sorry, CyclePat, but it just isn't so. As MilborneOne says above, this is simply shorthand for the fact that the same basic airframe had different names when it was produced for the Army with skids (Scout) or the Navy with wheels (Wasp). As an aside to the regulars: this confusion is precisely why I've been so insistent over the years that we don't do this kind of thing in article names. --Rlandmann (talk) 19:59, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Card #6 Scout/Wasp

Well... I learned something new. I'm just a little confused though... why is it the fuselage is bigger on one compared to the other? Does that effect the airframe (they still have the same airframe)? Anyways... interesting fact regarding the same airframes. I think you raise a very important part regarding this article... I think this needs to be better developed (if not already within the articles body) within the lead section of the article. When you think about it, unfortunatelly, until we get some reliable reference to substantiat this, (don't get me wrong I do believe you but we need a reliable source regarding the airframe fact!!), we really can't do anything about it. So, I believe, in the mean time, removing a perfectly good source, the US 55 cards, (albeit, perhaps with numbers rounded up and down,) doesn't make sense to me. If I can summarize this in one sentence, which could be pretty much implemented within all the articles related to the 55 cards (which I will continue to develop): Our problem is: "In 1982, The US military Naval Center presented cue cards with some statistics which are different than other reliable sources. Hence, we have a type of contradiction." If this is the problem... then should we not simply state this within the article? Is this a big issue? Notable enough to mention? I would argue it could be. Let first argue against: That means I'm obviously willing to consider these "cards" as a type of non-peer reviewed material... ORIGINAL Material published by the Government... which means it's from the main source. I believe that means it has less importance according to our policies. However, as I argue for: I still believe it can have its respected (though minor) viewpoint within the article. (It is after all a respectable publisher... the Government... the US Naval Training Equipment Center after all)... Plus, even if they have printed a mystake, it gives a perspective on what the US though about this aircraft at that time. I'll go upload a scan of the card now and lets talk about this a little later! --CyclePat (talk) 21:00, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

The difference in lengths is because one is including the rotor and the other is of the fuselage alone. The Wasp has folding rotors (and tailplane) for shipboard storage. GraemeLeggett (talk) 21:13, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

CyclePat, you may find this article from a 1963 issue of Flight International useful. Because this article also uses the paragraph heading "Scout/Wasp" to describe these two helicopters, I've removed the PROD from Scout/Wasp and turned it into a redirect instead. --20:50, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Thank you guys! b.t.w. I've added an a scan of the card in our text. Here is a link to the image File:US & foreign aircraft recognition Scout&Wasp (UK).png. Sorry it's not straight. --CyclePat (talk) 21:50, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Looking at the uploaded card it looks like it is not a reliable source for measurements as they appear to be simplified to aid comparison of size in combat. They are far more reliable sources on British (and American) aircraft just because it is in the public domain and produced by the US government does not make it right. I would suggest that adding the card as a reference to any article is probably a waste of time. MilborneOne (talk) 22:06, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

That's right. We're not saying these numbers are correct and no one is saying "they're incorrect" either. In our case, these cards appear to round up or down the values. A good example of this can be found in the table I so handidly provided in the aformentioned conversation. 9 m vs. 9.24 m?? Seriously, this is getting into minute details. I would like to compare this comparison with the article pi. The reason for this is because they present all the different values. The article states "Later, Liu Hui invented a quick method of calculating π and obtained an approximate value of 3.1416 with only a 96-gon, by taking advantage of the fact that the difference in area of successive polygons forms a geometric series ..." They even have an approximation value of 3 (with reference). In this respect and in light of the section dedicated to Pi#Numerical_approximations I would believe that adding other values respects wikipedia's NPOV policies. After all, the measurement of something is nothing more than a POV!!! Hence it is silly to associate approximations with "unreliable sources".--CyclePat (talk) 22:33, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

The cards are not an accurate source for measurements we dont mention every document concerning an aircraft because it has either rounded up or down or has got the measurement wrong - nothing to do with POV a measurement is a finite thing unlike pi. For example the Wasp and Scout have a rotor diameter of 32 ft 3 in and we can find a reliable source for that anything else is not worth mentioning - no pov just an encyclopedia of facts. MilborneOne (talk) 22:42, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Okay! Point well taken. I also may see some other issues (ie.: peer-reviewed, etc.). So I concede (plus I'm tired of arguing I just want to work on adding the information... such as the one article that was missing some information and these cards is really the only source). Anyways... I will contine making a list of all the aircrafts within DEVICE 5E14G (Recognition Study Cards) which will be on my userpage. Best wishes. And honestly... thank you again for the explanations. And if there is some missing information in the current article I will use this as a the main source. --CyclePat (talk) 23:01, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

While these cards don't seem to be terrifically good references for the specification, particularly as the sort of aircraft which the US Navy is likely to provide recognition training aids are likely to be the sort of well known aircraft for which we can find good reliable sources for specifications relatively easily, they may be more useful as a source of public domain diagrams.Nigel Ish (talk) 22:21, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

I was thinking the same thing - the diagrams could be very useful (as long as they are scanned straight!) - Ahunt (talk) 23:02, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

I took the liberty of straightening it. --John (talk) 00:26, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Dates

Based on something Bzuk said to me a while ago, I have been under the impression that we use international date format (DD-MM-YYYY) on aviation articles. This seems to make sense as aircraft tend to be of international interest. However I can't see this on Wikipedia:WikiProject Aviation/Style guide anywhere. If this is not already our norm may I propose that it be so and that it be added to the style guide? --John (talk) 19:14, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

THe ISO date format is a standard, but who uses it in everyday use? Not the UK, nor the US. So long as we stick to a worded date, which is unambigious, we are fine.GraemeLeggett (talk) 19:58, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Actually, John's specifically referring to "DD-MM-YYYY", not to ISO.... --Rlandmann (talk) 20:47, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

In practice, the US commercial/private aircraft and related articles generally us MM-DD-YYYY, while US military aircraft articles use DD-MM-YYYY, which is what the US miltary itself has used/uses. All other articles generally use the international format. I'm not sure what format is standard in Canada, but I think most of the Canadian pages also use International format. - BillCJ (talk) 21:57, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

The official Canadian military date format is DD MMM YY, for example 15 May 08. It is actually the least ambiguous one out there! In Canadian civil use just about all formats are used with the result of utter confusion, meaning that when you see 08/09/08 you have no clue if they meant 08 Sep O8 or 09 Aug 08. To avoid this mess I use the DD full month YYYY, ie 15 February 2008. Guidance for this is Wikipedia wide and is found at Wikipedia:MOSNUM#Full_date_formatting- Ahunt (talk) 22:04, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I am familiar with that guidance. I was thinking of "In certain subject areas the customary format may differ from the usual national one: for example, articles on the modern U.S. military often use day before month, in accordance with usage in that field" and wondering if there is an existing project consensus here on dates, as Bzuk said, or whether there is an appetite here to stadardize aviation-related articles to DD-MMM-YYYY. It seems faintly odd that US civil aviation uses a different standard of formatting to all other articles. Failing that, BillCJ's summary above seems a fair one. I've messaged Bzuk obviously to see if he can clarify his comment. --John (talk) 00:18, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Invisible engines?

Can anyone see why the engines are not displaying in the specs section of Westland Whirlwind (fighter), I can't work it out. Cheers Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 14:36, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Fixed --Typ932 ^T·C 14:46, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Many thanks. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 14:54, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Redundant articles?

The KAI KT-1 and Daewoo SHI KTX-1 appear to be about the same aircraft. KTX-1 appears to be the designation for the prototype of the KT-1. However, neither article is linked to the other, and they appear to have been created independently (KTX-1 is the newer article). Are the two models different enough to warrant separate pages, or should the stubby KTX-1 page be merged into the more-detailed KT-1? Thanks. - BillCJ (talk) 08:44, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

Yeah; it was a dupe. I've merged them. --Rlandmann (talk) 09:20, 28 December 2008 (UTC