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I am considering tagging this article, Singapore Airlines Flight 368 for lack of notability. Do you believe this engine fire incident should have its own article or be solely covered at Boeing 777#Accidents and incidents? This seems mostly minor except maybe the issue with the engine’s main fuel oil heat exchanger (MFOHE). MFOHE issue(s) have come up in multiple accidents and incidents before as I recall. Thanks, -Fnlayson (talk) 20:34, 28 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It is is pretty minor, damage seem to have been restricted to the engine itself. - Ahunt (talk) 15:32, 29 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Not even a hull loss.--Marc Lacoste (talk) 18:36, 1 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Singapore Airlines Flight 368. Vici Vidi (talk) 08:26, 7 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about a homebuilt aircraft type of which only one example has been built. The article was started in 2005 and still has only first party refs (just the owner's own website). A search found no third party refs. Is anyone aware of any paper refs about this aircraft? Thoughts on what to do about the article? - Ahunt (talk) 13:28, 6 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It flies, therefore by Project consensus it is notable. And there seems plenty of online chatter about it. But the only written refs I can find offhand are Wikipedia scrapings. I found a dead link to somebody's "flight manual" for it. Are there not directories of private/homebuilds out there, not to mention an FAA registration database or something like that? However whether the topic deserves its own article is debatable. I don't know how much of its original Rutan Long-EZ design is unchanged, but there is surely a case to merge it in there. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 16:34, 6 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There are homebuilt aircraft directories, and I have several here, but they tend to ignore "one-offs" as there are quite a lot of them and, like this one, are often just modifications of existing designs. I like your merger idea. - Ahunt (talk) 23:49, 6 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I have left a prompt for more input (and some refs to meet WP:GNG) on the article talk page. Unless any refs can be found then our consensus here is to merge it to Rutan Long-EZ. - Ahunt (talk) 12:18, 13 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Lacking any further discussion, objections or indeed any third party refs:  Done - Ahunt (talk) 12:06, 26 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hi all, a fairly new user has been adding comparison tables to transport aircraft articles. complete with national flags. I've removed them on sight, but they've been added back to Shaanxi Y-9 and Xi'an Y-20. Is this something we want? I think we've nixed them before, but can't remember when. Whichever way we go, we need to clarify it in WP:AIR/PC. Thanks. BilCat (talk) 03:04, 15 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The table is not too bad. Not sure, but a good place may be Military transport aircraft? --JuergenKlueser (talk) 06:21, 15 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That's a good suggestion. BilCat (talk) 06:34, 15 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Ditto.--Marc Lacoste (talk) 06:43, 15 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, does not belong in an aircraft type article. - Ahunt (talk) 12:48, 15 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like we have a common view on that. I am going to contact the user, and tell him our proposal. (Done here) --JuergenKlueser (talk) 18:19, 15 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Also agree that tables like this should not appear in aircraft type articles. The comparison problem we had before was whole articles e.g 'Spitfire versus Bf109' etc. It was a long time ago and I can't remember the creating editor. The citations in this current table should be checked as they should support the comparison, not just support the listed specification otherwise it is original research/synthesis etc (and/or other bad things covered at WP:NOT!). Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 20:55, 15 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone who understands reality in aircraft performance is aware of the fact that performance specifications are usually misleading and in some instances down right fraudulent. They will give a top speed, range, maximum weight, etcetera even though they cannot all be achieved in the same flight. In the instance of fighter aircraft they might honestly be treated as separate items. There is a sound reason why fighters usually carry external stores to perform their mission. Do you really think a F-whatever is going Mach 1.75 with wall to wall high drags? If it tries to it is not going as fast or as far as the "specs." A fighter may go X mph, or Y miles or carry Z load but not all on the same flight. In the instance of transports top speed is meaningless. Cruising speed is seldom mentioned as is the important issue of Mach number. The airspeed at any Mach number varies with altitude, temperature and air pressure. As weight and/or speed goes up, range goes down. Anyone who intends to cruise with the Mach meter on the barber poll is going to burn more fuel. His family might be happy to see him home early but the airline's accountants are going to frown. There is a sound reason why airliners today are not as fast as the Convair 880/990 or even a 50 year old 747. There is a reason why no one is flying a supersonic airliner. There is a reason why Boeing stopped talking about the Sonic Cruiser. No airline wanted it. At best performance numbers as used in data blocks are of little real value. Compare them with great caution. Mark Lincoln (talk) 09:22, 5 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

An editor has added a section on an accident in 2020. I deleted it on the basis of our guidance re light aircraft accidents but that has been reverted and the text scrambled, including a non-standard date format. More worrying is that two of the three refs are about accidents to different airframes. Author's justification for revert is that "it is interesting." I couled del again but another voice might be useful.TSRL (talk) 19:46, 24 September 2020 (UTC) Thanks for sorting.TSRL (talk) 14:05, 26 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Does anyone know the sub-type number of this transport version of the 77 described in https://archive.org/details/aerodigest2619unse/page/n323/mode/1up?TSRL (talk) 20:03, 26 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

See: Bellanca Aircruiser at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellanca_Aircruiser The Aircrusier and related Airbus were very popular and came in many varieties. The 77-140 was an attempt at a bomber version. The Army did not want it but the Fuerza Aérea Colombiana (Columbian Air Force) bought several as well as a float plane 77-320 Junior which had a turret instead of the open gun position of the 77-140. Giuseppe Mario Bellanc was both a visionary designer and a bit of a mavarick. His Aircruiser was an important airplane in the early to mid-1930s. It was particularly appreciated in bush operations such as Canada, and South America. I saw one in flying condition in Oregon. Mark Lincoln (talk) 09:53, 5 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This isn't an important inquiry by any means, but I was just curious what other people here think of this photo, specifically what's going on with the people in the center of the frame. It's part of a set of photos from the Library of Congress showing operations in July 1941 at the then-new Washington National Airport, taken for the Farm Security Administration.

For now, I'm not going to state any guesses, as I don't want to prejudice the judgments of others. --Colin Douglas Howell (talk) 06:46, 30 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

My first take is that the man in the centre has knocked/injured his head somehow, and the left hand man is taking off his cap and pushing his hair back to see better. (Hohum ^@) 14:25, 30 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know about the people in the picture but the co-pilot is in trouble as he doesn't have the AA Flag mast and flag up. AA before WW II had interesting DC-3s with passenger doors on the right rather than the left side. There was one some times at Homestead General in 1967 which was owned by a guy who was a VIP at Florida Power and Light.The guys who owned the PT-17 I used to fly were friends of his.

____

It appears that the Wikipedia has decided with the person(s) wishing to drop the period despite conclusive evidence to the contrary. In the previous discussion of this matter one person claimed that Nevil Shute (Norway) did not use the period in his autobiography "Slide Rule." This is quite untrue. I have a copy of "Slide Rule" and it uses the proper R.100 (and R.101). As Mr Norway was chief calculator and oversaw the completion of R.100 as well as flying on all but one the R.100's flights it seem a valid reference. Indeed it may be considered source material. A recent biography of Mr Shute "Shute – The engineer who became a prince of storytellers" also uses R.100 as Mr Shute did in his autobiography. J.E. Morpurgo in "Barnes Wallis: A biography" published in 1972 use the correct nomenclature R.100 as well as R.80, R.38, and the R. in other British rigid airships so correct nomenclature is not just a modern fetish. As it appears from the deletion of the correct usage in the R100 article Wikipedia has decided to not admit to the truth and rather has indicated that it prefers inaccuracy in its content. I may have to reconsider my use of my remaining life span editing articles. This is not said as a threat but rather as an observation that as I am almost 71 years old and probability my demise within a few years is high what is the point of spending my remaining time on what is doomed to be sub-standard work? What is the purpose of Wikipedia? Is it just to be just a collection of matter of low scholarship? Or is it intended to be a source of some merit? Mark Lincoln (talk) 08:48, 5 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That conversation was unresolved and looks like staying that way. May I suggest that you have better things to do with your remaining years than flogging a dead horse. Wikipedia has plenty more areas which can benefit from your expertise; but no, it does not ultimately regard itself as a reliable source, with issues such as this being just one of many reasons why not. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 11:30, 5 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

How come the article's title, R101, does not have the dot while all occurrences in the article have it? I don't particularly care which form is considered the correct one, but at the very least there should be consistency within the whole article, title included. --Deeday-UK (talk) 19:13, 5 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

How come indeed. See for example these discussions/posts:

• Talk:R100#Designation?
• Talk:R101#Nomenclature
• Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Aircraft/Archive_46#R101/R.101
• Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Aircraft/Archive_46#The_matter_of_British_airship_nomenclature_R.100_vs_R100

and these non-consensus edits by Mark Lincoln (talk · contribs)

• to R100
• to R101

— Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 20:00, 5 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

When I first edited the R.101 page a reasonable objection was made. Most people would be searching for the common mistaken name R101. This was a reasonable objection given the Wikipedia's situation of being a first resort of many people searching for information. I do not believe that changing the name of the Wikipedia article would be justified. As for internal information in an article I believe that any encyclopedic source should strive to provide accurate information. The question comes down to what the Wikipedia is. The Cambridge Dictionary defines "Wikipedia" as "the name of a large website that provides free information in many languages on many subjects, and can be changed or added to by anyone. There are experts who watch for errors, and pages on which disagreements about subjects can be discussed." Here we are doing just that. The disagreement is whether the Wikipedia should provide accurate information or not. Mark Lincoln (talk) 20:27, 5 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"For want of a dot, Wikipedia was lost"? Hardly. BilCat (talk) 20:35, 5 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

No, Wikipedia is not lost. It will have only lost my efforts. It will still have your standards and efforts. I have ingrained standards. My History 401 (Historiography) thesis in 1971 was "The Military Rigid Airship 1908-1935." We were only required to submit an effort of more than four pages. That was deemed sufficient to demonstrate we had learned the course material. I ended up with 64 pages. It had grown like topsy. I received an A. The professor commented "To say this is an excellent and well researched paper is a bit of an understatement!" She also said that "When writing on such an technical subject, don't assume too much knowledge on the part of your reader," Thus my tendency to elaborate and explain. My desire to do as thorough and excellent a job has always been perhaps the greatest accomplishment of my upbringing. Thus if I am required to do slip-shod work I would rather not. I am almost 71 years old and could spend my declining years reading more and writing less. This is not a pique. It is just a matter of if I can not do a good job why do it? Mark Lincoln (talk) 22:33, 5 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Why no dot?

I hate to see editors disheartened after inputting hard work, one way or the other this situation should be resolved. Wikipedia:Requests for comment is available but may be excessive for this problem. Most importantly editors have to abide by the outcome. In the links provided above I only see arguments based on 'it appears in this source with a dot and that source without a dot'. We use reference sources to find and cite facts but don't necessarily have to use the exact same format or spellings.

The R.101 is not alone on Wikipedia for losing its dot, it is explained at our abbreviation article that the full stop is used to signify a shortened form, in this case I believe the R stands for 'Rigid' hence R.100. I would surmise that the full stop was not painted on the craft as the shortened name was not part of a sentence.

Other cases of 'dot loss' are the de Havilland aircraft types (DH.82, DH 82 etc) and older Rolls-Royce aero engine types where 'RB' designations lost their dot. Rolls-Royce PR material no longer uses the dot, the Royal Air Force has also dropped the dot from aircraft marks eg. Hawk T.1 ('T' for trainer) is now Hawk T1.

What I believe has happened is the use of the full stop to denote an abbreviation has been dropped over time (in British English at least). The dilemma is do we use old forms or newer forms? We do know that it is 2020 and the majority of Wikipedia readers won't be aware of older uses of language and may have puzzled looks when they read them (we are not allowed to say or write aviatrix or actress any more for instance).

I know we (aircraft project) have spent time on the de Havilland dot problem before, what we need to make progress is some guidance in our style guide that everyone can follow, there may be something in the Manual of Style, I haven't looked. A very good reason to resolve this is the perennial problem of one editor adding dots to articles and navboxes and another editor removing them, a more difficult problem is pages being moved to the 'correct' designation without discussion.

The alternative is to ignore this problem (and others), shrug our shoulders and carry on, which I have to say I do quite a lot!! Hoping that this can be resolved one way or the other. Cheers Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 08:56, 6 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I recently declined a new editor's draft, as it had several issues with it such as potentially indiscriminate information, it being similar to the existing article on Concorde, among others. The draft is Draft:Concorde : legal aspects of the project. The user seems to be very eager, so I wanted to point him (@Nruget:) here in the hopes that one of you can take him under your wing and some more detailed notes on his draft since I'm not exceptionally familiar with the ins and outs of aircraft. One question I would like to see approached is whether or not his draft idea would work as a separate article from the main or whether he should be working on seeing if any of the information can be worked into the live article. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 08:27, 6 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]