Talk:Conventional landing gear

Title

I have a problem with the title of this article. I think the title should be the formal "Conventional Gear" and "Taildragger" should redirect to Conventional Gear, not the other way around. Comments? Rsduhamel 17:56, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I agree. Also, "Tailwheel" should point to Conventional gear as well. If you don't change it I eventually will :) DanD June 2, 2005

Disputed statements

User:Towpilot recently restored the following statements, which I had removed as unsourced:

"There is no doubt that no more skill is needed to take off and land a tailwheel aircraft, just some different training. An old myth translate this to mean that tailwheel aircraft are harder to operate, but this is not really true."

and

"There are experienced tailwheel pilots who insist that the added challenges of a tailwheel aircraft arise largely from a lack of skill that results from poor training when transitioning from a tricycle landing gear aircraft."

With the edit summary: "No reason to remove very general facts known to most pilots, at least everyone in the tailwheel comunity"

I have tagged these for "who said this" and "fact" as these are not generally well known and regardless if they are or not they must be attributed to who said them and referenced to a reliable source or they must be removed. As explained at WP:V: "The burden of evidence lies with the editor who adds or restores material. All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation."

See also the Jim Wales quote on that same page:

I can NOT emphasize this enough. There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative 'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs a cite' tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. This is true of all information, but it is particularly true of negative information about living persons.

Jimmy Wales Zero information is preferred to misleading or false information, publisher WikiEN-l electronic mailing list archive, date 2006-05-16, access date 2006-06-11

These insertions can also easily be challenged as a point-of-view, under WP:NPOV. They need to be carefully sourced or removed. - Ahunt (talk) 14:07, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

As a tail-wheel pilot myself, I'm in agreement with User:Towpilot about the "general fact"-ness of the statements, but also agree that we need citations. Stick and Rudder would be a good source for an early view on the ease of learning to fly tricycle gear, or as he calls them "modern safety airplanes" on page 186. -- Autopilot (talk) 16:21, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I have flown tailwheels, too, includes tailwheel twins (!). Well that is a fine suggestion, but that section of Langewiesche's book doesn't really cover the material that needs citing here, although it is a good explanation of the Ercoupe design. - Ahunt (talk) 17:40, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

As per the requirements cited above these unsourced opinions have been removed. As explained at WP:V, what matters is not that these statements are "right" but that they are "verifiable". Without proper sources cited they aren't, so please do not put them back in without proper sources cited. - Ahunt (talk) 15:56, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

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The opinion of Jimbo Wales is always interesting but he does not often declare himself to be speaking ex cathedra. What is written above requires moderation: The editor who removes the uncited assertion "2 + 2 = 4" or "Cairo is a city in Egypt" using Jimbo as his authority is not acting correctly. Paul Beardsell (talk) 01:02, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

In particular I feel that more than sometimes an editor wandering about aggressively removing uncited material does not apply the same strict standards to their own contributions becuase (s)he quite justifiably feels the information is (a) factual and (b) well known. If we followed Jimbo's advice over three quarters of every article would have to be trashed as if we were partaking in some pagan book burning festival. Paul Beardsell (talk) 01:07, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

I do not know how to characterise the editor who removes statements which he knows to be true on the basis that the statements are not supported by citation. It feels like vandalism to me. Jimbo's quote (above) has been very selectively chosen from a whole host of guidelines and policies which would not quite support that hard line. And I believe other Jimbo quotes could be found which would also seem to at least partly contradict the quoted Jimbo paragraph. Paul Beardsell (talk) 01:17, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

If you know something to be true you should not remove it. You should, in descending order of preference, (a) find a reference, (b) flag it as "citation-required" or (c) leave it alone. I am sure most here would agree, Jimbo too. Paul Beardsell (talk) 01:17, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

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Having said that, it is with some astonishment that I see some of you agreeing that flying a tailwheel aircraft is no more difficult than a nosewheel one. This is nothing but macho-crap. And before you all go about dick-waving over multiengine tailwheel a/c full of machine gun holes that you've flown while on fire mid-Atlantic, I too have flown tailwheel a/c, and did some of my very early flying at a school where only tailwheel a/c are used for ab initio training. Everyone knows (or should know) and the point is made in Stick and Rudder over and over again (and S&R is a perfectly citable reference), tricycle u/c a/c are easier to land and take off in almost every circumstance in comparison to so-called conventional u/c a/c. But our personal experiences are not relevant (unless they've been documented by some third party in a manner compliant with WP:V). Paul Beardsell (talk) 01:33, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Some interesting comments there. I quite agree that WP:V should not be used as a reason to remove all unsourced material, regardless of its accuracy. That policy is pretty clear that if the material is accurate then it should be relatively easy to find a ref for it and keep it, which is the proper procedure, of course. That said I totally agree with your surprise that people would add (unsourced) statements like "There is no doubt that no more skill is needed to take off and land a tailwheel aircraft, just some different training. An old myth translate this to mean that tailwheel aircraft are harder to operate, but this is not really true." On that subject I have a solid reference that clearly states that this is untrue, as you have indicated as well above, which is why I challenged it, discussed it above and ultimately removed it. I think this brings the whole matter to a point - many of the myths and legends surrounding this particular subject are factually incorrect, even if they make good stories. To me this indicates the importance of have good refs for the article, otherwise it deteriorates into a blog of opinions about flying taildraggers. There is no problem with having a blog on that subject, but not on Wikipedia. There is certainly room in the article for more material, but to avoid the adding of opinions as cited above it has to be referenced to a reliable source. - Ahunt (talk) 12:49, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Recent rewrite

The recent rewrite by Ahunt is positive in several respects. Better references, better worded, new and good info. But some very good material has been lost. It should not be an either-or, a choice between this good version and that good version. Info should not be lost. I am glad I was not a writer of the material lost without explanation. Paul Beardsell (talk) 00:58, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi Paul. Glad you found something useful in the rewrite. Flying tail draggers is a subject that is rife with opinions, myths and legends. The old information is still there in the page history. As the edit summaries I left indicate, nothing was removed except text that was unsourced and most of it had been tagged as such for quite some time. Unsourced text can be challenged and removed any time. This text can obviously be re-introduced from the history anytime, provided a reference is included. If text is put back in without a ref then expect that it will be tagged and eventually removed again, as required by WP:V. - Ahunt (talk) 12:22, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

WP:V does not "require" the removal of true material. Paul Beardsell (talk) 22:23, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

For what my opinion is worth I continue to remain very impressed by your ongoing contributions in both aviation and computing related articles. But, trying to be constructive, I think you may have removed one or two statements which, while not being supported by citation, remain true. I am sure there is never any good reason for removing true material. If one cannot find a reference for material which one otherwise knows to be true, or if a citation request has been outstanding on material which one knows to be true, then it can never be correct to remove the material. At least let an editor who disputes the material (if there is such an editor) remove it. Otherwise leave it alone or flag it: Someone will find the reference should it ever be disputed. Otherwise we'll be removing uncited statements such as "In the UK a rule of the road is to drive on the left.". Paul Beardsell (talk) 22:14, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

I have been presented before with the argument that the deleted material is in the archive and so is not really deleted. This is not persuasive. The reader of an article is unlikely to suspect that a relevant (to him) deletion of true material may be found in the archives and so is unlikely to go looking. Such (an unlikely) reader would in any event find the archives not particularly easy to access and that they are very difficult to search. Paul Beardsell (talk) 22:14, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

To repeat: If you know something to be true you should not remove it. You should, in descending order of preference, (a) find a reference, (b) flag it as "citation-required" or (c) leave it alone. Paul Beardsell (talk) 22:21, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually what I meant to convey is that if there is material I have removed that you feel is worth re-inserting then please, by all means, do go back to the history, find it and put it back in. I thought I had captured all the best points from the previous version, but it is likely I missed something that should have remained. Perhaps the text you refer to is self evident and non-controversial or perhaps we can find a ref for it. I didn't mean to indicate that readers could look through the past versions of the article. While some editors will go back to past versions to save old text or refs and bring them forward to the current version, I consider those versions are "gone" as far as the casual reader is concerned. So please do reintroduce anything you feel will improve the article, that I cut. if there is a problem we can discuss it here. - Ahunt (talk) 22:27, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

British or American English?

Are we using British or American English in this article? I ask because someone got a bit perplexed by the appearance of 'Tyres' which is the British spelling of 'Tires'. --Eamonnca1 (talk) 22:50, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

As per WP:ENGVAR either is acceptable since this is not exclusively a subject that pertains to one country but the spelling should not be changed to make it USA-centric to the exclusion of other uses. As you will note the use of the spelling of "tyres" is consistent as the word is only used once and is not spelled differently in the same article. Just in case you wondered I am not even defending my own use here, I am a Canadian and we spell it "tires" where I live. - Ahunt (talk) 23:11, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Undercarriage which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 12:14, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Landing gear which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 06:14, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Do we need a list of examples?

This article includes a short list of examples. Is this really useful? Such a list can never be complete, because nearly all aircraft manufactures before 1945 had a conventional undercarriage. The few examples shown here seem randomly selected and don't contribute anything to the general understanding. Avmarle (talk) 13:35, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

I think the current short list of examples is useful to the average reader in that they can see how this config is used in different designs, as long as the list doesn't get longer. I am not hard-set on this though, I could be convinced it should be removed. Perhaps a few more photos of representative types in this article would be better than the list? - Ahunt (talk) 16:32, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Jet aircraft

Would it be appropriate to replace:

Rare examples of jet-powered tailwheel aircraft that went into production and saw service include the British Supermarine Attacker and the Soviet Yakovlev Yak-15.

with:

The only examples of jet-powered tailwheel aircraft that went into production and saw service are the...

As far as I can make out, the class of jet taildraggers amounts to these two and an assortment of experimental aircraft and prototypes; there are no others. Anybody with more knowledge care to comment?Catsmeat (talk) 11:11, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

I think the only issue is whether these are the only two or not, hence the slightly vague wording. I could add that I am not aware of any others. - Ahunt (talk) 13:18, 17 March 2015 (UTC)