AirSpace broke another milestone today as the forum went past 3,000 members. We are really grateful to everyone who has signed up and hope that we can reach many more milestones in the future.

We always welcome suggestions on how to improve things as this area is for you all, so please let me know any comments you have.

At this juncture though, i want to remind you all about the multitude of things that AirSpace offers you so here is a reminder:

1. An option to talk to each other about all things aviation and beyond
2. The ability to add your own photos which are rated by your peers and could potentially adorn the pages of Flight International magazine. Everybody has a default gallery when they sign up to the site and this gallery has no size limit so please feel free to upload as many as you have or wish.
   
3. The chance to have your own blog where you can discuss your favourite topics in more detail or tell us about your job on a day-to-day basis. Again every member of AirSpace gets their own blog so if you have ever fancied having a go please do so or email me with any questions you have.
   
4. The ability to listen to podcasts and download PDFs in our downloads section, allowing you to download the latest Insight reports or listening to the latest highlights from Flightglobal with Week on the Web.
   

Thanks everyone!

Maverick

We are currently in the process of moving images from our old Flight Collection to AirSpace. As you can appreciete this is quite a large job, but today we can reveal some new fascinating images which have been released on the site.

The selection of images are range from pre and post 1914, to air races and historical prototypes. The full list is below:

• Historical Pre 1914
• Historical 1930s Civil
  
• Historical 1930s Military
• Historical 1939-1945
• Historical Post War
• Historical Air Races
• Historical Experimental and Prototypes

 We will be adding more historical images to the site and will keep you updated as we do.

We have also added some more images to our museums and collections area, where you can add your favourite images from the collections you visit.

As well as the exclusive Flight International front cover competition, AirSpace is giving you another exclusive photographic competition.

As many of you know, Flight this year purchased JP Fleets, the highly respected and informative yearly guide on fleet data. In the production of the 2009 edition, we thought that it would be a great idea to get you guys involved, both in the collection of data and in the images that are chosen to feature in the annual book.

So with this in mind, today we are launching the JP Fleets front cover competition, a chance for you to have your images on the front cover of the 2009 JP Edition.

Simply choose your best images, upload to this gallery (here is an explanation of how to upload images) and we will hand pick the best shots to use for the 2009 edition. The winner, as well as knowing that their image will be used, will also receive a free copy of JP Fleets 2009.

 *A look at the current edition of JP Fleets

 To give you an idea of the kind of shots we are looking for, above is a copy of the front cover of the current edition of JP Fleets. We need a selection of current and historical tail (multiple tails) shots, with plenty of colour and variety. It must also be at least 300 DPI. This competition will close on the 31st December so get posting.

If you think you can help in data collection, why not help contribute in our JP forums area , where you can help create the data for next year's edition.

This can include:

• JP Airline Fleets
• JP Biz and GA
• JP Helicopters
• JP Photography and Images (discuss the best locations for shooting etc)

Terms & Conditions:

• Competition deadline is Midnight on 31st December 2008
• The image has to be owned by the person entering the competition, no forgeries or copies allowed 
• The winner will receive a copy of the 2009 JP Fleets book. 
• There is no limit to the number of times each registrant may take part. 
  
• The judges decision is final. Winners will be contacted and expected to provide a high quality resolution (300 DPI or above) original of the image
  
• For details of Flight’s products and services go to www.flightglobal.com
  

Part of
Reed Business Information Ltd T: +44(0)20 8652 3500 Quadrant House www.reedbusiness.co.uk The Quadrant Registered in England, No 151537 Sutton, Surrey SM25AS A division of Reed Business

AirSpace is offering you another fantastic opportunity to get your best image onto the front cover of Flight International magazine.

After the success of last year's competition, where Boxer 03 came out victorious (see below), this year's expectations are extremely high, with six new categories to tempt your photographic abilities:

**AN EXPLANATION OF HOW TO ADD AN IMAGE TO THE COMPETITION**

	Menace - fighters in flight Precision - aerial display teams Majesty – airliners in action Response - inspiring business jets Voyage - general aviation in dramatic locations History – birds from bygone eras

The best image from the above six categories will adorn the front cover of Flight International's 16th December issue. The winner will also receive a framed copy of that front cover and £100 (GBP).

To get you in the mood, here are last year's categories and some visual highlights from last year:

Power and Glory | Aviation and the Environment | Frontiers | Veterans | The Need for Speed | Technology in Action

As well as this exclusive competition, Flightglobal is also giving the the opportunity to have your image on the front cover of the 2009 edition of JP Airline Fleets book.

To enter the Flight International front cover competition:

1. Simply click on the above categories, sign up to AirSpace (which takes a matter of minutes) and post your image into the named gallery of your choice.
2. Each category will be whittled down to a shortlist of three and the shortlists for individual categories will be featured on AirSpace in December 2008.
3. The Flight International cover to feature the AirSpace image of the year will be the 16th December 2008.
4. The AirSpace Image of the Year will be chosen by a panel of Flight judges, including the Editors of Flight International and Flightglobal.In addition to their image being used as the front cover of Flight International, the winner will receive a framed copy of the cover of Flight International and £100 (GBP) prize money.
5. The image used needs to have a minimum of 300 DPI resolution and be at least 22cm high or wide

Terms & Conditions:

• Competition deadline is Midnight on 7th December 2008
• The image has to be owned by the person entering the competition, no forgeries or copies allowed
• The winner will receive a framed copy of the cover of Flight International and £100 (GBP) prize money.
• There is no limit to the number of times each registrant may take part.
• No employee of Reed Business Information is eligible to enter the competition.
• The judges decision is final
  • For details of Flight’s products and services go to www.flightglobal.com

Part of
Reed Business Information Ltd T: +44(0)20 8652 3500 Quadrant House www.reedbusiness.co.uk The Quadrant Registered in England, No 151537 Sutton, Surrey SM25AS A division of Reed Business

Since AirSpace was launched over a year ago, we have aimed to make improvements to the photo side of the site both in terms of how they look on the photos page and the process you go through to upload them. We have improved the photos page to improve the most recent/most commented and most viewed, and today we are pleased to announce our first change to the number of images you can upload at once. We are pleased to announce that from today, you will be able to upload up to 10 images at a time to AirSpace.

To do so is very simple. You simply go through the same process as before (add a new photo/enter your galleries control panel (see below)  and in the common tasks area you will notice an upload multiple photos option.

 When you click on this option you will get 10 boxes (as highlighted in the image below). Simply browse to your image and give it a subject title, before giving the relevant set of tags at the bottom of the screen. Then press save and all the images will be uploaded at once. 

Once you have pressed save, you will be able to edit all the pictures as you wish.

As we progress, we hope to make further improvements to make uploading and tagging your images easier (e.g. uploading to multiple galleries, mulitiple tagging etc) but as an initial step this i hope is some improvement.

If you experience any problems with this,please email me or write a comment below or in our F&Q area.

 As some of you may have noticed, last week we enhanced a couple of features on the site and here is a little quick description of what the main changes are:

1. Firstly and perhaps the most obvious change, we have doubled the amount of Recent Photos/Posts on the homepage, utilising the white space and making sure that your great posts/photos stay on the homepage for a longer period
2. The photo page now has a limiter on it so it counts only the last 2 weeks of data. This will mean a more refreshed page with all the latest and most relevant images coming to the front of the photo page. Unfortunately it also means we lose the Ryanair girls from that page
   
3. Finally, we have added a see more link to each of the four photo areas, so you can see in a paginated list all the latest/highest rated/most commented and highest viewed list.

See examples of this here:

• Recent Photos 
• Highest Rated
• Most Commented
• Most Viewed

 We have introduced a new ranking system on AirSpace that will enable you to win prizes and fun stuff while enjoying the community. Very simply, this is based on the number of posts, and is ranked in the following levels:

Ground Crew - New users welcome, with a little patience you will soon be riding up the AirSpace chart

Cabin Crew - A step up the ladder in becoming an AirSpace veteran. Still someway to go but with a little luck...

Engineer - Reach this level and expect a wondrous prize (well a prize anyway). If you are already at this level, let me know

First Officer: Very near the top, you are close to the top of AirSpace tree and only require a little more effort to it.

Captain: You are at AirSpace Everest. Well done, you are a top dog of the community where moderation access awaits you.
 

Before anybody asks, the reason for picking these as levels is not to offend anybody so if you do work in cabin crew you are as essential to us as captain, we just needed a level barometer and we were sick of using Top Gun references  

Hi All,

AirSpace, like the rest of Flightglobal, is always trying to improve, and so we get released updates from time-to-time. Some of these developments you can see (E.G. the photos page changes) others you can't (i.e. backend improvements). One of these updates happened today and with it has come an unexpected problem that you should all be aware of.

For the moment, when you go into an individual thread or photo, it will appear that you are logged out (your name will disappear and it will seem like you will need to sign in). You are still logged in though, so you can do all the things you should be able to, but it may just seem you are logged out.

We aim to get this problem fixed as soon as possible and will let you know when it is. We can only apologise for this and we are endeaving to fix this problem as soon as possible.

 If you have any problems,please contact me.

Regards

Maverick
 

The numorous nominations for the 100 Greatest in association with Bombardier have been collated and argued over (luckily with no fisticuffs involved), to produce a shortlist of 100 that you can now vote for.

The winners and categories will be announced at Farnborough Air Show, but meanwhile, why not vote for your chance to win a Sony Camcorder.

A big congratulations to Paul M, who was the lucky winner of an IPOD Nano, during our April competition.

 Sick of using YouTube, well AirSpace is here to the rescue.

We are in the final stages of offering a platform where you our good friends can upload video to. All you have to do is fill in this simple form, upload your video and off you go.

Here is a guide of how to submit video:

When uploaded, you will get an email sent to you to confirm and to give you the code when it is live on our video solution Brightcove. From here you can embed the video anywhere you like, much like on YouTube.

Your video will also be added to a playlist with all the other uploaded content so you can see easily what other people are doing.

Although in final stages, this is still in test mode, so if you have any problems please contact me or let me know on the site!

I have created a new area on the forum dedicated to Top 5s which is called LISTS OF FURY. This area allows you to rant to your heart's content about your Top 5 worst airports, or ponder about your Top 5 Airlines that should never have been, or Top 5 inflight snacks.

 This can be for any aviation related Top 5 list so please be inventive or as quirky as you wish. There may even be a prize for the best Top 5 list or idea.

Blogging may seema new fangled thing but it really is an area for you to discuss and debate opinions.

Our blogging functionality on AirSpace allows you to write about anything you want to! From writing about your favourite aviation memories, to your thoughts about the current state of the industry and latest news, it really is an area for you to use how you wish.  

Dakota67 is our first AirSpace blogger, already giving us his thoughts on the world's ugliest aircraft and on how to keep the DC-3 flying.

If you would like your own blog, please do not hesitate to contact me and we can easily create one for you.
 

After over 250 entries, we are proud to announce a winner for the aircraft recognition competition which we ran over the Christmas period. 

From all those entrants, 30 of you got all of the right answers, and so we used our random generator to pick a winner - that winner being Mr David Jeffries.

A big congratulations to him and the £100 (GBP) will be sent to him in due course. For all the curious among you, the actual answers were:

Here's the form for reference (remember the competition is finished)

1. 21 De Havilland DH66 Hercules
2. 1  Martin B-57
3. 19 De Havilland DH108 Swallow
4. 3  Siai Marchetti SM95
5. 10 Handley Page Hermes
6. 8  Convair B36 Peacemaker
7. 5  Saro Princess
8. 16 Convair B58 Hustler
9. 12 Bristol Sycamore
10. 23 Chance Vought TF-8A Crusader
11. 2  Embraer 170
12. 6  Boeing 757
13. 4 Saab Gripen
14. 9 Cessna Citation CJ1
15. 22 Agusta Westland EH101 Merlin
16. 11 Concorde
17. 15 Boeing 747
18. 20 Bombardier CRJ700
19. 17 Sikorsky CH53
20. 24 Ilyushin IL76

We have created a new and exciting area on AirSpace that celebrates the 100 year anniversary of Flight International while putting your debating skills to the test.

Our aim is simple; to create an exclusive list with a difference! With your help and industry opinion, we want to create a definitive list of the 100 greatest, made up from the top twenty of five highly-charged categories. Those categories are:

1. Civil Aircraft
2. Military Aircraft
3. Engines
4. People
5. Moments
   

To begin with we just want nominations. Is the A380 the best civil aircraft of the last hundred years? Can the Spitfire be bettered in military aircraft history? By nominating your favourite you can place your nominations into the mix and put it into the contention for the top 20 list.

 It won't only be you nominating though. We will have opinion from around the industry on their best moment or favourite person. From CEOs to the movers and shakers, we want to canvass opinion from everywhere to create a final shortlist of twenty for each category.

Once that is achieved, our shortlists will be open to vote, where you will help decide  the order of the top twenty, and allow us to create a definitive 100 list, which will be unveiled at Farnborough air show.

So get nominating if you want to see your favourite get the recognition it deserves...
 

To celebrate the introduction of our Downloads area, we have added an podcast interview between Formula 1 ace Lewis Hamilton and Max Kingsley-Jones. They talked while  on a Learjet 40 from the TAG Aviation business terminal at Farnborough in the UK, to the Bombardier factory in Belfast, where he made a guest appearance as part of Shorts 100th anniversary celebrations.

In it, Lewis explains how his role with Bombardier has transformed his life, as well as his thoughts on the prospects for some more close racing in the 2008 F1 season.You can hear it here!