Talk:AAI Aerosonde

I am unsure as to where to put this in the List of aircraft and to what categories, I should assign the Aerosonde. I am also trying to gather more information on the Laima in particular, since she went beyond the listed maximum range in the specs. Any and all tips are most appreciated, as are edits, or course. --JimCollaborator 23:45, Mar 19, 2005 (UTC)

Our general naming conventions for aircraft are manufacturer, followed by the name or model number of the aircraft (the only real exception being for US miltiary aircraft, which go designation then name, or manufacturer then designation for aircraft which were not named). Insitu was the entity that created the aircraft, so it should get manufacturer status here, and it should be filed under this in the List of aircraft. --Rlandmann 01:15, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ok, I have added a few categories, and have found that the article needs serious updating, so I will be working on that for a while. --JimCollaborator 00:23, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)

At the moment, we have articles on so few civil aerial-survey type aircraft (about 3, I think) that they're going into the "Special-purpose" category tree, as you correctly surmised. --Rlandmann 01:15, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I am adding more information about later generations of Aerosondes over the next few hours, and I think that the "manufacturer" may be an issue, since there is an Aerosonde company that exclusively manufactures the Aerosondes. Also, since this is an international company (HQ in Australia, but the company also operates and is formed in the U.S.) and the group that designed the Aerosonde was international, I don't think the U.S. Special-purpose category is appropriate. But lets add further info from additional sources before we make that decision.

A question: how should I deal with later generations of the Aerosonde (e.g. the Mark X.y -- currently Mark 4.2, I believe)? If the general characteristics and performance specs are different, should I have additional articles? These are not variants per se, I believe, so I don't know quite what to do with it.

Like I said, Insitu (a U.S. company established in 1992) was the particular entity that was ultimately responsible for the project, hence their manufacturer status in the article title, and the "U.S." categorisation. The Australian company Aerosonde Ltd only licences the technology from Insitu (see [1]). In cases where this "originating entity" differs from the entity that actually builds the machine, our naming and categorisation always favour the former. We have precendence for this in early British Admiralty aircraft (actually built by Supermarine and other firms), in practically every aircraft flown in the Soviet Union, and even in the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer (as well as a few other Rutan designs).

I don't claim any particular expertise on this aircraft, however, and am quite happy to be persuaded otherwise. I'm just drawing these conclusions from what I've found on-line about the relationship between the entities concerned. The sense I get is something like "Aerosonde Ltd built/builds UAVs under licence from Insitu". This was certainly the case at the time of Laima, but I'm less certain of the current situation, which would only be relevant anyway if you were adding more articles about later models.

Manufacturers, governments, and air forces are all quite inconsistent about what constitutes a new aircraft as opposed to a variant of an existing one, and we generally follow how the creators/operators of the type see/saw the aircraft, rather than having to judge this ourselves. The easiest way to work out what was intended is by comparing the designations - if the "Eagle 1", "Eagle 2", and "Eagle 4" are all aerobatic biplanes based on the same design, but the "Eagle 3" is an amphibious helicopter, then all four aircraft are normally written up individually. If (as I believe is true in the case of the Aerosondes) these are all "just" variants of the one design, then there's no reason why they can't all be covered in the one article until and unless the time comes to split the article amongst the variants because of length. When covering multiple variants in the one article, we use the data for one specific variant (and name it); so this in itself isn't a reason to create separate articles. --Rlandmann 02:40, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your expertise and patience with me. In my Internet-exploration, I didn't find that information on the licensee relationship between Insitu Group and Aerosonde, Ltd., and the information I had before seemed to indicate a more direct relationship between the two. I will do some more research and add to the page to make this article more thorough. Thanks again! --JimCollaborator 03:00, Mar 20, 2005 (UTC)

Still smallest plane to cross atlantic?

Check http://tam.plannet21.com Wingspan 1.83 meters fuselage is 1.8 meters, weight less than 5kg.

Given the lack of landing gear, what's the landing method? Is it destructive? Does it land on water? Does it feature any landing aid at all? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.154.71.171 (talk) 14:51, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Proposed updates

I note that this page is several years out of date and does not contain the correct company information or specifications for the Mk4.7, which is the current production version of the aircraft. I propose the following updates:

• - Rename the parent company as "Textron Systems"
• - Rename the page to simply "Aerosonde" (it avoids confusion with AAI Corporation, which has been rebranded as Textron Systems. The vehicle itself is marketed simply as 'Aerosonde')
• - Update the specifications to match the latest brochures on the Textron Systems / Aerosonde websites for the Aerosonde Mk4.7
• - Expand the development, history, variants, sections.

If anyone has any objections to this, please contact me on the Talk page. I am an aerospace engineer with 15 years experience and will ensure all pertinent information is sourced from industry-approved public domain sources and data released by the manufacturer. --Jgarth 06:30, Mar 2, 2015 — Preceding undated comment added 07:31, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

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