DWG said:
I'm fairly well read on the interwar projects, yet seeing all the contenders pulled together I'm noticing stuff I hadn't seen before. The major competitors to these projects are well known, yet at the same time there are others that are less well known, so fully worthy of a place here, and placing them in context adds considerable information - were they more or less advanced than their competitors? Closer to the requirement, or less so? And so on. I think there's actually considerable value to a specification based thread in providing mutual context.
WRT Wikipedia, it's a useful aggregator of information. I could type in a summary of what the Putnam's volumes say on any of these aircraft and no one would blink, if I cut and paste someone else's summary of the same info from wiki, what's the difference?
And these aircraft may be reasonably well known to us, as followers of British interwar projects, but are they as well known to Blackkite, or other non-British contributors?
Couldn't have put it better myself . . .
ETA: And for that matter the P.66 in Hesham's post is new to me. I presume that's the Boulton Paul submission?
Yes, you are correct . . .
Schneiderman said:
. . . The value of this site is that it aims to add new information, not just gives links to very obvious secondary sources. Things will decline very rapidly if we just become a summarised encylopedia of aircraft, we should aim for something better.
Agreed, which is why in my previous post I said we should be correcting and enhancing the generally available information . . .
As an example, Hesham's endless searching through old magazines has located a large amount of unusual projects etc. that go a long way to putting the aircraft we know into a broader context,
And vice versa! If for example, we just make a post about the Boulton Paul P.66 in isolation, we have no context within which to evaluate the design. Post it here, in the 'G.4/31' thread, and that information is here, where it's useful. Another example, in your excellent Schneider Trophy book (I have a copy), you don't just write about the unbuilt projects, you also include the 'well known', which you have to, in order to tell the complete story. It's the same in this situation, I believe . . .
. . . and that is surely the kind of thing we should champion. Its the unbuilt, unseen, unusual that lies at the heart of the forum.
Again, agreed, however, if we abandon the broader view, we risk disappearing ever more deeply down an ever narrowing rabbit hole . . .
cheers,
Robin.