This is a set of suggested guidelines for articles on specific aircraft types. Some wikipedians prefer a standardised look and feel to articles on closely-related subjects and these guidelines exist to facilitate achieving that goal for articles about aircraft.

For general guidelines about writing and editing Wikipedia articles, see Category:Wikipedia style guidelines.

[edit] Name

Every article in Wikipedia has a name, and most aircraft articles are named by their manufacturer, then by name and/or designation number, for example Boeing 747, Supermarine Spitfire.

Articles should always be named as generally as possible, so an article should only be named after a subtype (eg Messerschmitt Bf 109G) if writing about that specific version of the aircraft. Usually this will mean that we already have a more general article about the aircraft, relevant to all subtypes. If no general article exists, it may be worthwhile expanding the article slightly so that it encompasses all variants of the aircraft.

See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (aircraft) for a more detailed treatment of aircraft naming conventions here.

[edit] Introduction

Every article should begin with a short introduction naming the aircraft, its manufacturer(s), and the general category of aircraft it belongs to. For example:

The Cessna 172 Skyhawk received its type certificate from the FAA in 1955. It is an all-metal, four-seat, single-engine, high-wing airplane with one door under each wing. The 172 was a direct descendant of the earlier Cessna 170, which used conventional (tailwheel) landing gear instead of tricycle (nosewheel) gear.

Without going any further, a reader should already have a good basic idea of what kind of aircraft the article is describing.

[edit] Infobox

If the article is of moderate length or longer, an infobox is often a good way to sum up relevant information. {{Infobox Aircraft}} presents data such as manufacturer, maiden flight, service entry and retirement dates, number produced, and other quick facts in a fairly attractive and concise fashion.

Based on several past discussions, the infobox is purely optional, though infoboxes including specifications are frowned upon. {{Infobox Aircraft}} was designed with input from the project and its use is encouraged.

[edit] Body

The body of the article describes the aircraft in greater detail. This information is often best arranged in sections, especially in longer articles. Some frequently used sections in aircraft articles include any and all of the following:

Development, describing the history behind the aircraft, often discussing why a manufacturer, airline, or air force felt there was a need for such an aircraft.

Operational history, describing the history of the aircraft in use. This section is something like a "biography" of the aircraft.

Variants, describing major subtypes or variants of the aircraft. These can be arranged in subsections - see Messerschmitt Me 163 for an example of how this can be done.

Markings, describing the livery, camouflage, or markings that the aircraft flew in, especially any especially noteworthy or unusual schemes.

Users, usually a collection of links to airlines or individual air force squadrons that used this type.

[edit] Aircraft specifications

Note: through much of 2004, WikiProject Aircraft was using a table to present aircraft specifications. This old table standard is archived here.

This is a short summary of aircraft's characteristics and performance. If an article doesn't have specifications, you can either tag the article with {{aero-specs}} or add them yourself. Please use the new {{Aircraft specifications}} conditional template when adding specifications; details and a brief explanation are available on the template's talk page. You can either copy-and-paste the template into the page or type {{subst:airspec-imp}} for imperial (metric) units or {{subst:airspec-met}} for metric (imperial) units where the Specifications section would go. The blank template will be inserted when you save the page.

By convention, specifications are laid out as follows:

[edit] Specifications (variant described)

General characteristics

• Crew:
• Length: ft in (m)
• Wingspan: ft in (m)
• Height: ft in (m)
• Wing area: ft (m)
• Empty weight: lb (kg)
• Loaded weight: lb (kg)
• Useful load: lb (kg)
• Max takeoff weight: lb (kg)

Performance

• Never exceed speed: mph (km/h)
• Maximum speed: mph (km/h)
• Cruise speed: mph (km/h)
• Stall speed: mph (km/h)
• Range: mi (km)
• Service ceiling: ft (m)
• Rate of climb: ft/min (m/s)
• Wing loading: lb/ft² (kg/m²)

• Power/mass: hp/lb ( kW/kg)
• Thrust/weight: :1

Armament

• Guns:
• Bombs:
• Rockets:
• Missiles:
• Other:

Note that these specifications should relate to a specific variant of the aircraft, and be labelled accordingly. Usually this will be the most famous/noteworthy/numerous one.

Please keep in mind that if a line is not applicable to a particular aircraft type, it should be omitted, for example "powerplant" for sailplanes. On the other hand, if data is applicable but you simply don't know it, please leave the line in place to remind others to fill it in. If you're using the template, simply leave the line blank rather than omitting it.

• Capacity is for airliners and military transports

• Power for piston engines, Thrust for jets and rockets. Of course, a few types will have both. Therefore, Thrust/weight will also apply only to jets and rocket aircraft, and Power/mass to propeller aircraft. Delete whatever's not appropriate.

• Maximum speed may (and probably should) be given as a Mach number for supersonic aircraft.

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Aircraft/Units for a more detailed discussion of units.

[edit] Engine specifications

Piston engines (all reciprocating engines, including rotary engines)
Please use the Pistonspecs template.

[edit] Specifications (variant described)

General characteristics

• Type: (example: seven-cylinder supercharged air-cooled radial piston engine)
• Bore: in (mm)
• Stroke: in (mm)
• Displacement: in³ (L)
• Length: in (mm)
• Diameter: in (mm)
• Dry weight: lb (kg)

Components

• Valvetrain: (example: two pushrod-actuated valves per cylinder with sodium-cooled exhaust valve, overhead camshaft-actuated, two intake and two exhaust valves per cylinder, sodium-cooled exhaust valve stems)³
• Supercharger: (example: two-speed two-stage, boost pressure automatically linked to the throttle, water-air aftercooler installed between the second stage and the engine)
• Turbocharger:
• Fuel system: (example: twin-choke updraft carburetor with automatic mixture control)
• Fuel type:
• Oil system: (example: dry sump with one pressure pump and two scavenge pumps)
• Cooling system: (example: 70% water and 30% ethylene glycol coolant mixture, pressurized)

Performance

• Power output: hp ( kW) at rpm for takeoff at sea level; hp (kW) at rpm for cruise at ft (m)
• Specific power: hp/in³ ( kW/L)
• Compression ratio:
• Fuel consumption: US gal/h ( L/h) at economical cruise
• Specific fuel consumption: (acceptable alternative to fuel consumption)
• Oil consumption: US gal/h ( L/h)
• Power-to-weight ratio: hp/lb ( kW/kg)

Jet engines (includes turbojets, turbofans, turboprops, and turboshafts)
Please use the Jetspecs template.

[edit] Specifications (variant described)

General characteristics

• Type: (examples: turbofan, turbojet, thermojet)
• Length: in ( mm)
• Diameter: in ( mm)
• Dry weight: lb ( kg)

Components

• Compressor: (example: single-stage dual-entry centrifugal compressor with two-sided impeller; axial compressor should also be wiki-linked)
• Combustion chambers: (example: 10 flow combustion chambers with igniter plugs in chambers 3 and 10)
• Turbine: (example: single-stage axial flow with 54 blades)
• Fuel type: (example: aviation kerosene with 1% lubricating oil)
• Oil system: US gal ( L) capacity, circulation rate US gal/h ( L/h), maximum inverted flying time
• Cooling system:

Performance

• Overall pressure ratio:
• Thrust: lbf ( kN) at rpm for takeoff; lbf ( kN) at rpm for cruise; lbf ( kN) at rpm at idle.
• Air consumption: lb/s (kg/s)
• Turbine inlet temperature: °F (°C)
• Fuel consumption: lb/h ( kg/h) at maximum power; lb/hr ( kg/h) at cruise power; lb/h ( kg/h) at idle
• Specific fuel consumption: (acceptable alternative to fuel consumption)
• Oil consumption: US gal/h ( L/h)
• Thrust-to-weight ratio:

[edit] Popular culture

A "Popular Culture" section should be avoided per Wikipedia:Avoid trivia sections in articles unless the appearances are especially notable. This section should not be a compendium of every trivial appearance, but significant ones of relevance to the airframe. The canonical example would be Top Gun for the F-14 Tomcat. Due to the large number of survey and arcade simulations, an effort should be made to avoid tallying every sim appearance unless there are very few of them. Fictional versions and speculation about fictional likenesses should not be included, as they constitute original research.

[edit] References

This section contains details of print references and/or external links to websites used in the article. Wikipedia preferes the APA format, so that's what we should use as well (see here for a comprehensive example set, and here for a list of templates). To integrate your references into the article, please consider using the new reference tags. Examples of citations:

Book source

Lincoln, Abraham; Grant, U. S.; & Davis, Jefferson (1861). Resolving Family Differences Peacefully (3rd ed.). Gettysburg: Printing Press. ISBN 0-12-345678-9.

Journal

Brandybuck, Meriadoc. (1955). "Herb-lore of the Shire". Journal of the Royal Institute of Chemistry 10 (2), 234–351.

Newspaper/Magazine articles

Blair, Eric Arthur (Aug. 29, 1949). "Looking forward to a bright tomorrow". New English Weekly, p. 57.

Websites

Gates, Bill & Ballmer, Steve (1998). "The Big Open-source Advocacy Homepage". Retrieved Aug. 5, 2003.

Other Wikipedias

Citau les fonts from the Catalan-language Wikipedia. Retrieved December 27, 2004.

Company press releases

Siemens AG (July 13, 1999). Shell and Siemens to develop emission-free fuel cell power plant. Press Release.

There are also templates that allow the automatic formatting of references based on the information you have available; for websites, use {{cite web | }}, and for books, use {{cite book | }}.

[edit] External links

This section contains links to external websites that were not reference material for the article, such as image sites.

[edit] Related content

This section contains links to other aircraft-related material in Wikipedia. There is a template available, {{Aircontent}} , with parameters for the below sections as well as external links. It also automatically includes the {{airlistbox}} template described below.

By convention, this section includes:

Related development: are those that this aircraft were developed from, or which were developed from it. Many aircraft will be stand-alone developments with no relatives, in which case this line should not be used.

eg - For the P-51 Mustang, "Related development" would include at least the F-82 Twin Mustang, CAC Kangaroo, Cavalier Mustang and Piper Enforcer.

Comparable aircraft: are those of similar role, era, and capability to this one. This will always be somewhat subjective, of course, but try to keep this as tight as possible. Again, some aircraft will be one-of-a-kind and this line will be inappropriate.

eg: aircraft comparable to the Boeing 707 include the Convair 880 and Douglas DC-8

Designation sequence: will usually be that of the aircraft's manufacturer, but there are exceptions, such as designations issued to aircraft of the Third Reich, or by the US armed services. Conventionally, the Sequence should stretch to three aircraft before and three aircraft after the one described in the article.

eg: the sequence for the F-15 Eagle would read "F-11 - YF-12 - F-14 - F-15 - F-16 - F-17 - F/A-18" (note that the non-existent F-13 designation is skipped).

Variants: Some aircraft have variants that are covered in their own separate articles

See also: Links to other related articles not already linked.

Finally, the "Related content" section ends with a small footer that links together the bulk of Wikipedia's aviation content:

Timeline of aviation
Aircraft • Aircraft manufacturers • Aircraft engines • Aircraft engine manufacturers • Airports • Airlines
Air forces • Aircraft weapons • Missiles • Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) • Experimental aircraft
Notable airline accidents and incidents • Famous aviation-related deaths

This is can also be implemented simply by typing {{airlistbox}}, which adds the footer template at the end of the article.

[edit] Category

Aircraft are categorised primarily by their nationality, role, and era, for example Category:British airliners 1960-1969. A number of secondary categories also exist that link together aircraft with certain noteworthy features, such as Category:Swing-wing aircraft. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Aircraft/Categories for a full description of the Category system.

[edit] Hints, tips, and finishing touches

Remember wherever possible to wiki powerplants and weapons, preferably in the article, but in the table if not mentioned in the text.

Where appropriate, use "year in aviation", instead of "year" (eg. [[2004 in aviation|2004]] instead of [[2004]]). Add significant events pertaining to the aircraft to the "year in aviation" page.

When you're done, please make sure to add your new article to list of aircraft, new powerplants to list of aircraft engines, and new weapons to the list of aircraft weapons. (Then, above them, there's also list of aircraft manufacturers and list of aircraft engine manufacturers and list of aviation topics,...)

[edit] Creating a new aircraft page

You can pre-fill a new aircraft page with all elements of the layout as follows:

1. Create a new page.
2. Type {{subst:aircraft-imp}} for imperial (metric) units or {{aircraft-met}} for metric (imperial) units.
3. Save the page.
4. The page will be now pre-formatted with the correct layout!
5. After you create a new page, please add it to Wikipedia:New articles (Aircraft)

[edit] Units

For general Wikipedia conventions on units, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers).

[edit] Conversion

There are plenty of converters to be found on-line, but if you want to do them manually, the conversion factors are:

• Imperial to metric

• m = ((inches/12)+ft) / 3.28
• m² = ft² / 10.76
• kg = lb / 2.2
• kW = hp × 0.746
• kN = lb_f (thrust) / 224.26
• N/kg = lb_f/lb (thrust/mass) * 9.81
• km = miles × 1.61

• Metric to imperial

• ft = m × 3.28 (subtract the whole number from the result, then multiply the remainder by 12 to give the number of inches)
• ft² = m² × 10.76
• lb = kg × 2.2
• hp = kW/0.746 (ignore "metric" hp [0.735 kW])
• lb_f (thrust) = kN × 224.26, or kg × 2.2 (if thrust is quoted in kg)
• lb_f/lb (thrust/mass) = N/kg / 9.81
• miles = km / 1.61

Overprecision for performance figures is unnecessary — most of these are approximates under specific conditions anyway, and many published figures show evidence of having already been converted between Imperial and metric and back again.

[edit] Thrust-to-weight ratio

The main purpose of having this ratio specified is to compare different engines and vehicles. We therefore need to be as consistent as possible within the wikipedia; and as consistent as possible with external sources.

The main difficulty is that whilst thrust has units of force, Weight here can either mean mass (kg or lb) or force due to gravity (N or lbf). If the latter, the figure is characteristically dimensionless and requires no conversion. Note that any metric and imperial unit usage must be consistent- use of lb's or kg's implies a thrust/mass ratio is specified.

Preferred:

(By about 100 times this is the most common usage found- this is very much preferred; also see [1].)

• Thrust/weight ratio of 0.3

Acceptable in some cases:

These usages should only be used to reflect the data source used for the article, to avoid unnecessary conversions which lose accuracy due to rounding issues, note that a dimensionless quantity is always present for comparison purposes to minimise the possibility of confusion. Not also that the raw data from the datasource is specified first.

• Thrust/weight ratio of 1 lbf/lb (9.81 N/kg, 1)
• Thrust/weight ratio of 9.81 N/kg (1 lbf/lb, 1)
• Thrust/weight ratio of 1.3:1
• Thrust/weight ratio of 1 (1 lbf/lb, 9.81 N/kg)

Sometimes a 'thrust/mass' ratio is quoted by a data source as dimensionless. This typically means they're really quoting a thrust/weight ratio. Wherever possible this should be confirmed from another source, but rewriting it in the preferred or acceptable forms is justified, but should preferably be commented on in the talk page or using '< ! - >' style angle brackets invisibly in the article itself.

Deprecated:

• Thrust/mass ratio of 1 lbf/lb (9.81 N/kg) - please quote thrust/weight as well
• Thrust/mass ratio of 1 -thrust to mass cannot be dimensionless, convert
• Thrust:weight ratio of 1 (9.81 N/kg) - include both lbf/lb as well as N/kg is preferred
• Thrust/weight ratio of 9.81 (1 lbf/lb) - mathematically impossible!

[edit] Specific Impulse

The correct units for specific impulse are seconds in both imperial and SI units. (See Rocket Propulsion Elements by George P. Sutton and Oscar Biblarz, seventh edition et al). Therefore no conversion need be employed.

Sometimes specific impulse is incorrectly, but not unusually listed as a velocity or as Ns/kg. This is in fact a different quantity known as 'c', the effective exhaust velocity. This can take the units m/s (or equivalently, from Newton's third law Ns/kg) or ft/s. Its use is deprecated, but may be employed if quoted by a manufacturer, or added in addition to the specific impulse.

Finally, remember that you're in no way obliged to follow all, or even any, of these guidelines to contribute an article.