The USE statement in the aircraft type drop down box

One of the fundamental principles of AP is not to be bogged down in trivia, it's the photos not the trivia that we are interested in.

So you may come across a number of aircraft in the drop-down boxes with something like Beechcraft (for the manufacturer) and

390 Premier (use Hawker Beechcraft 390 Premier)

What we mean by this is there is more than one manufacturer for the 390 Premier. There is Beechcraft, Hawker Beechcraft and Raytheon*. In order to keep things simple we will try to standardise on a single manufacturer, in this case Hawker Beechcraft, so that the auto complete functions work properly and to make it easier to find all the pictures of a particular aircraft all in the one place.

Eurocopter and Aerospatiale is another, basically if they type has an EC type prefix then its Eurocopter, AS Aerospatiale.

Where our system falls down badly, (and I have given up trying to maintain it) is the F-16s. If I had my way I would have all of them under one manufacturer, General Dynamics, you will also find F-16s under Lockheed Martin.

The only type that seems to sustain itself if the F-16C Jastrząb, so thanks for that.

AP is not really interested if the aircraft that you photographed is a Boeing 747-4BQ, that's trivia, a Boeing 747-400 is good enough for us!

Boeing 747 Freighters are a total nonsense, BCF Boeing Converted Freighter, who really can tell the difference or who really cares?

Another thing is similar types, sometimes the difference between one aircraft and another can not be easily seen, such as the engine or avionics, with these aircraft we tend to lump them all together into a single type.

Harvards come to mind. We do not care who built it, or if it is a Harvard or a Texan, AT-6, or T-6, SNJ-4 or SNJ-5 externally it is a Harvard and all the Harvards are to be found in one place under North American North American Harvard/Texan series.

So lets keep things simple and if you are having problems finding a particular manufacturer try the search box at the top right and use something simple like Savannah and see what manufacturer it suggests to use... hint hint.... the kits are made in Italy by ICP.

* The type goes back as far as British Aerospace, Hawker Siddeley or even the de Havilland Jet Dragon!

Hi,

After reading your post my first tought was what do you do with the USAF VIP's and discoverd some mistakes. I saw that ther's a Beech 1900C 86-0079 which should actually be beech C12J huron and a 757 00-09001 which should be 00-9001 :wink: which is already in the DB as C32!

And what does AP want with planes where you weren't able to read the serial/registration (wathever its called)? Just pick a random one or leave it?

Have a nice evening!

Bradley

This post has been edited by Bradley Malais on 19th April 2012 - 21:34

The standard thing to do with a picture without a registration or serial is to insert a hyphen " -" into the box.

The same goes for Airport Overview shots, not all airports have a four letter ICAO locator so they are changed to a hyphen if that's inserted.

(Clearly that's not a Huron. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.)