May 2008 Archives

Last week over on the Flight blog I posted something about how F1 and aviation seem to be popular bed fellows.

If you're one of those that's interested in both then you might fancy getting your hands on a signed photo of F1 champion Kimi Raikkonen who was begrudgingly signing mostly Piaggio stuff at Ebace.

Despite the scrum Flight's brand currency was enough to our photo done as well, (which incidentally was taken by our very own Max Kingsley-Jones).

 

 

Find out how to win the signed photo of F1 champion Kimi Raikonnen here ...

The nominations for the 100 Greatest in association with Bombardier (greatest civil aircraft, military aircraft, engine, person and moment) have been collated, debated and poured over and finally we've decided on the shortlist for Flight's final 100 Greatest.

You can see the shortlist here on the 100 Greatest page and vote for your choices.

The winners of the categories will be announced at this year's Farnborough Air Show both online and at Flight's 100-year anniversary party. Every voter also is automatically entered into a prize draw for the chance to win a Sony Camcorder.

The judging process for the final shortlist was exhaustive. Flight's senior editors and strategists gathered for days in a darkened room pouring over the nominations and arguing their case for inclusions or exclusions.

Fundamentally, the judges were looking for worthy nominations from the last 100 years but certain criteria were taking into consideration.

The shortlists were to include choices that reflected balance both in terms of geography and chronology.

We wanted all time periods (within the last 100 years) and types of aircraft and nations to be represented (as long as they merited it!) to give the voters a broad spectrum to consider. Go here to study the 100 Greatest shortlists in more detail through Flightglobal's online resources ...

Civil Aircraft

Military Aircraft

Person

Moment

Engine

After a lot of pain all our blogs have now moved over to the upgraded version of Movable Type (4.1).

Our Head of Blogging at Reed Business Information (Flight's publishing house) has documented the exhausting process here for any of you really interested in the details.

However the up-shot for most of us is that our bloggers will benefit from a better suite of tools (such as an iPhone interface and improved WYSIWYG formatting tools), and hopefully produce better looking blog posts as a result.

In addition, the new platform frees us up to tackle the rusty blog templates and embark upon a much-needed redesign program for all our blogs.

Flight International issue 13-19 May

Formula One's Sir Frank Williams joins the likes of Virgin Galactic's Will Whitehorn in nominating his 100 Greatest on AirSpace in celebration of Flight's 100 years of publishing.

Take a look at the image galleries on AirSpace. Of particular interest is the A350 gallery which houses images relating to Max Kingsley-Jones' story about the Emirates A350 pictures that revealed for the first time, the revised nose design. You can compare it with the original 2006 concept.

And FlightBlogger posts images comparing the aircraft's new wing with the old one.

Following the recent acquisition of JP Fleets to Flight's product portfolio, you can now pre-order your copy of JP Fleets 2008.

Check out the new video channel on Flightglobal and see our own webmaster Andrew Costerton’s video footage of a his recent Chinook flight as part of the RAF's 90th anniversary celebrations and see a speeded up version of a Southwest aircraft being built and painted in the hangar.

We’ve been trialling a new video package on FG for a month or two now. And now we’re happy to flag it up a bit more.

As with most of the developments on this website – it’s something we plan to enhance with time, but it serves our current purpose very well and helps add another medium to our content portfolio.

The system is based on the Brightcove video technology which offers the kind of features you’ll be used to seeing on youtube or similar sites.
We’ll be using the video service both the host our own videos and for users submitted video.

For the user stuff here’s our very own Disco Stu talking you through 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.

Check out the Flightglobal video page ...

Also, as this is fairly new the chances are there may be some kinks that we’re yet to iron out. If you encounter any problems then please let us know and we’ll check them out.

Flight International issue 6 - 12 May

FlightBlogger posted a three part blog hosting images, taken by Charles Conklin, of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner which came out to play briefly last week.

One of last week’s images of the day was the Caspian Sea Monster. It looks odd and if you want to see it move, check out Flight’s blog which hosts a video of it demonstrating wing-in-ground effect.

Take a look at the image of the Lockheed U-2 aircraft’s cockpit. The aircraft has been upgraded with more than $1.7 billion in new avionics, engines and sensors at regular intervals throughout its 48-year lifetime.

Flightglobal has the first pictures of Open Skies’ Boeing 757 which departed from London Heathrow and, not to be missed, the video and pictures of the Phenom 300’s first flight.

And… why not join the likes of Virgin Galactic’s Will Whitehorn in nominating your 100 Greatest in our special area in AirSpace.