Several user notified me recently about the HTTP error 403 appearing in some portions of the site. Some browsers would display a message saying “ You are not authorized to access this page”, or even suggest that a login is required.

This problem should have been solved now, please let me know if there are any remaining issues.

Reviewing the press from the recent weeks we have a few interesting Spitfire sales.

• Chinese businessman pays record price for WW II Spitfire
  A Chinese businessman paid what is believed to be a record USD 1.81 million (1.3 million Euro) for a World War II Spitfire Mk. XVI auctioned in New Zealand. [Zee News]
  
  More about this auction and the Spitfire sale can be read here and here.
  
• Spitfire pilots celebrate Duxford's 90th anniversary
  The Duxford airfield celebrated its 90th anniversary last week. [Telegraph]

Sadly, we also have another obituary. Roy William Hook, D-Day veteran and former Spitfire pilot died on August 18 at the age of 88. Roy flew Spitfires with No. 167 Squadron staring in 1942. He then went on with his unit to the continent, fyling with the 2nd TAF.

Labels: history, warbirds, webmaster

A short note today to inform you that I'm away on holidays with my family an therefore will be able to commence updates on this site only after 18th August. Right now we're enjoying the sun and wind in Mallorca. No Spitfires here for sure, but no vacation would be complete without at least one new aviation impression. We spent a day at the beach along the beautiful bay of Pollensa watching the impressive Spanish Canadair CL-215 amphibians practicing take-offs and landings on water. When observed in the air, these aircraft have something attractively old-fashioned about them and it is perhaps a pity that so few of their kind can be seen around in Europe.

Holiday reading includes memories by Jeffrey Quill: Spitfire - A Test Pilot's Story. A well-written and significant book for anyone studying the history of the Spitfire, both from its development and operational perspective. For whatever reason I acquired my copy only in June of this year. I will return with full review later.

Labels: webmaster

I'm sitting at the café in the middle of a busy city street. The weather is fine outside, shoppers are passing by, a group of nice but alarmingly shallow young female characters are chattering at the neighbouring table. My latte feels just right, I'm writing this on battery power surfing through somebody else's WiFi connection and the life in general feels thoroughly enjoyable. It's a blogger's paradise - why can't one's real job look like this?

June has been a month of slow updates, but as job pressures (the real ones) hopefully decline during the summer I hope to find more time for this site. But before doing that I'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who sent me email praising the site, offering suggestions or simply expressing their affection for the Spitfire. Here's an email which I have received recently from Mr Ken Gowans in Nova Scotia, Canada. It is interesting to see among different people in how many different ways this aircraft had inspired a lifetime interest. What's your Spitfire story?

Hi Martin,

Firstly love the site love the Spitfire.

I have attached picture of myself (smaller person) and another Air Cadet with a Sptfire MK XIV. My picture was taken circa 1971 at RAF Leuchars in Fife, Scotland, where TB252 was the gate guard for many years. This aircraft, TS252, is currently being restored in New Zealand.

http://www.warbirdrestoration.co.nz/current.html

Click to enlarge image

Labels: warbirds, webmaster

May is a strange time of the year. There's so much to do, and time passes so quickly that before you have noticed, an entire month has gone in a flash. Is it ten days after I've made my last update? A lot seems to have happened since then - but sadly, not one of the many additions to this site that I have in stock.

First of all, I've had a very busy period at work, reaching a project milestone. If you live by project deadlines, you'll know what I mean. Enough said.

Secondly, I have been starting a company of my own to accomodate my "hobby" activities - teaching, lectures, and writing, including bookwriting.

Thirdly, I have started a number of activities at the Spitfire Site - a number of my own history articles and research, developing a discussion forum and editing submissions form other authors. Given the priorities of the month, this has turned out to be over the top and I will need to prioritize between these activities to get anything done during the coming weeks. Also , it's the end of the month and I will have to focus on producing the next monthly issue of the IPMS Stockholm Magazine before I can do more updates at this site.

Last but not least, I spent a weekend away in a company of this lady. Need I mention that she was worth all the attention that she could get?

Full report, with pictures and commantary will follow - eventually. Can you recognize the mark of this Spitfire?

Labels: warbirds, webmaster

Almost exactly one month ago I have initiated the RAF 90th Anniversary Festival to celebrate this important milestone and try to populate this site with more articles, photographs, art and other material related to the Royal Air Force and its long history.

How did we succeeed? Let's have an overview of all the festival contributions in April and new additions pending this month.

• The Variants and Technology section was enhanced with two important reference features. A two-part Concise Guide To Spitfire Wing Types provides an overview of of the basic wing types of the Spitfire and the differences between them. Inherently related to Spitfire wing design is also The Hispano Cannon, the weapon which gave the aircraft the punch and a characteristic element of its silhouette.
  
  
• Four new colour profiles added during the month in Camouflage & Markings were NH550, in Royal Norwegian Service accompanied by another Norwegian Reconnaissance Spitfire, EP706 - The Malta Defender Spitfire Mk. Vc and "Bogle" Bodie and his Spitfire Mk. I, X4321.
  
  This adds up to six new reference articles, a good record indeed, with no less than three additional features currently waiting to be published.
  
  
• The pace in the History Articles section was rather more leisurely, with two articles added. Independent Air Force - Tracing the Origins of the RAF, an essay by Brett Holman and A Lifetime of Aviation, another essay by Martin Waligorski.
  
  This month I will be adding much more in this section, with five-part coverage of the 1941 Circus offensive as a main theme.
  
  
• Images added to the Historic Photographs section were: a portrait of Sqn/Ldr Jiří Maňák,
  photos of RAB Spitfire of W/Cdr Berg, UZ-Z of No. 306 Squadron, Northolt, Spitfire Mk. VII in the United States, launch of Operation Bowery and K5054 prototype prior to her maiden flight.
  


• The Video Section grew with just about as many videos, including the footage of Mark Hanna leading Spitfire formation display, Spitfire in IL2, Best of Chino's contraprop Spitfire Mk. XIX and Public debut of Seafire Mk. XVII SX336.
  
  
• The new Gallery Section, established at the beginning of the month, grew up rapidly and is already offering several hundred quality images. Collections added this month were: Spitfire Models by Tim Prosser, images from Old Warden 2007, The Joy of Flight Testing the Spitfire Mk. V BL628, Seafire Mk.XVII SX336, 90th Anniversary of the Royal Air Force, April 2008 celebration flypast over London, BBMF 50th Anniversary, 2007 and finally Ronnie Olsthoorn Photo Gallery with many beautiful Spitfire images.
  
  I'm happy that the technology behind the galleries worked out. Image collections I have been receiving from our visitors since last autumn can now finally be posted online and I will continue to do so during the months to come.
  
  
• Modellers have proven to be eager and knowledgeable supporters of this site. Their interest was demonstrated last month through a collection of 1/72 Spitfire Models by Tim Prosser , Spitfire in Saigon, a tribute to the Memory of A/C Paul Webb, Tamiya Spitfire Mk. V backdated to Mk. Ib, Kenley Wings beer-carrying Spitfire and another Malta Spitfire Mk. V.
  


• Another group which keeps giving this site a "push" are aviation artists; many new great pieces can be enjoyed in the Art & Memorabilia gallery and Pavel Rampír has been spoiling us with an entire series of drawings. Enjoy A portrait of Clive Caldwell, Spitfire Mk. VIII in Italy, "The Last", Chasing the V-1, "The CO's Query", Typhoon trouble, Beware of the low-flying Mosquitos, "Se va la Primera". For collectors, there was also a set of RAF 90th Anniversary poststamps.
  

Summarizing, it is apparent that April was one of the most fruitful months on the Spitfire Site so far. It is fantastic, and showed up well through the editorial workload - I had a hard time coping with all the material I've been receiving. I'd like to direct a warm thank you to everyone who contributed their work and material to make it happen. My apologies to those few who are still waiting to get their contributions published - none has been forgotten and they will appear online as soon as I can possibly manage.

The RAF Anniversary Festival will continue for some time to come, so please keep the articles and photos coming.

In the meantime, I'm into some serious programming trying to establish a discussion forum for all of us Spitfire buffs. I'll keep you posted.

Labels: history, modelling, reference, site updates, videos, warbirds, webmaster

I decided to take a few day's break from the site updates, focusing instead on some technical improvements to the site's fabric. To keep you busy while this work is going on, here's one small addition in the Art & Memorabilia gallery:

• Spitfire Mk. VIII in Italy, a new pencil drawing by Pavel Rampir.
  
  
• Not a new addition, but one item to which I would like to draw your attention again, is this photo of No. 306 Squadron Spitfire Mk. IX. The new element is the excessive commentary added by an anonymous visitor. I once wrote that I'd like every picture in the Historic Photos gallery to tell a story, and this is a great example of how much can be achieved with a common effort. Thanks everyone who have added their comments to various photos so far.

It is also the Polish pilot's names in the above article that prompted me to work with the first technical issue during the weekend. With the default character set (Western European) hitherto used on this site, some of these peculiar Polish letters were not supported, refusing to show up correctly in the browser. The solution was converting the entire side to Unicode (UTF-8) standard, and this has been done during an evening's work. Now, there's no more guessing about the name of Żulikowski - well, maybe the pronunciation, but not the spelling :)

This addition and some of the email I've been receiving recently also show that there's a need for a discussion forum on this site. I have spent some time reviewing the available software for this purpose. There's plenty of sophisticated shrink-wrap bulletin board solutions available these days, but to begin with and test the feasibility of the idea, I'd rather have something more simplistic and easily accessible for the users. Thus we will start with a simple discussion forum, eventually dressing it up in features or converting to full BB standard as future interest grows. I think I have now an outline of suitable design, and should be able to set up a forum feature in a week or two.

Lastly, there have been issues with a commenting feature of the blog posts. Several users have pointed out that this function is not as easy to use as one might expect. It is hard for me to pinpoint exactly what the problems are, but the fact remains that the user interface for signing one's entry is unnecessarily confusing. This is enough for me to start looking for alternative solutions. This, however, will be my second priority after the discussion forum.

Labels: site updates, webmaster

I am pleased to say that one small but stubborn layout problem which has plagued me since the start of this site has been resolved. For whatever reason, Internet Explorer 7 has difficulty with clearing float elements (clear: both in CSS), which may result in seemingly random, sometimes screen-long whitespace being inserted before the element being cleared. The problem is widely recognized among the web design community, but the exact nature of the bug is as yet not known. Last week, I have finally found a solution to this after some thorough experimenting.

What does it have to do with you, the visitor of this site? Since I'm using clearing technique for placement of pictures in the text, the immediate result of the problem was my inability to publish images larger than roughly 640 pixels across. On screens 1024x768 in resolution, which about 40% of our visitors seem to have, using any larger image in an article would trigger the IE7 clearing float problem, resulting in the layout being scrambled.

So finding the solution means: larger images. And larger images mean more detail and more viewing pleasure. This is well reflected in today's updates in Photo Galleries:

• A new gallery for today is devoted to Seafire Mk.XVII SX336, a unique airworthy Griffon-powered Seafire. Photography by Mark Mills.
  
  
• I have also reworked two previous galleries to increase the picture size: BBMF 50th Anniversary, 2007 and Ronnie Olsthoorn Photo Gallery. I'm pleased with the result and think that both these galleries are well worth a second look.

Enjoy.

Labels: site updates, warbirds, webmaster

While the central Royal Air Force anniversary festivities are behind us, the web offers perfect opportunity to continue celebrating its 90 years. Today at the Spitfire Site we're launching the RAF 90th Anniversary Festival!

What is the RAF 90th Anniversary Festival?

Simply speaking, we're aimig at creating a broad collection of articles, memories, photographs, documents, drawings, art and other material connected to the Royal Air Force and its long history. It is our hope that it can be developed by collective voluntary effort, whereupon visitors, friendly bloggers and webmasters submit any suitable material and the Spitfire Site acts as host, putting it all together.

The history of the Royal Air Force suggests different things to different people, so this festival aims to be as inclusive as possible. This means that we'll accept anything fitting into its main subject, not only the Spitfire, Fighter Command or World War II.

The festival means that material can be submitted by anyone - meaning you, the readers.

What kind of submissions are we looking for?
- Articles, essays or other forms of writing
- Photographs, individual or collections
- Personal recollections or experiences of your relatives / friends
- Documents, letters etc.
- Drawings, artwork
- Photos of collectibles
- Scale models
- Book & movie reviews

If your material has already been published elsewhere on the web, don't worry. We will still gladly post it here to make the collection available in one place. Should you prefer to link to your original page or site, we can do that, too. Naturally, all sources will be properly credited.

It’s a good way of creating a sense of community around RAF history, cross-promoting good resources on the web and offering future readers the best material on this worthy topic.

The festival is planned to last until May or June 2008, depending on the scale of public response.

Please help us to spread the news about RAF 90th Anniversary Festival on your favourite discussion forums, blogs and sites around the web. It will help us greatly to succeed with our aim. Thank you!

All submissions should be directed to

Now without further delay, let's have a look at the first festival update:

• In history articles, Brett Holman traces the origins of the birth of RAF as the Independent Air Force.
  
  
• Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding is the subject of our second article today. A Lifetime of Aviation describes the very beginnings of his aviation career and reflects upon the development witnessed by Dowding during his military career. By Martin Waligorski.
  
  
• In Photo Galleries you can find a collection of stunning photographs from the BBMF 50th Anniversary air display at Duxford, 5 May 2007. By Rover75.
  
  
• Spitfire images by Ronnie Olsthoorn is our second gallery entry in this update, with many stunning images.

Enjoy.

Labels: history, site updates, webmaster

To all visitors checking this site during the Easter Holiday - best wishes to you. Enjoy a long weekend off work, drive safely, have all your chocolate eggs and come back next week for new updates of the Spitfire Site. Thank you for your continuing support.

Labels: webmaster

• I'm glad to be able to deliver the second rather sizable addition for this week. Considering the subject of our site, it was inevitable that we would include a story about Reginald J. Mitchell, the engineering genius behind the Spitfire. Personally I'm not very fond of formal "encyclopedia-style" biographies, so I'm particularly glad to present John Dell's essay which takes on a rather personal view of Mitchell's life and achievements. Enjoy his two-part story Mr. Mitchell, Designer of the Spitfire - In Memory of a Brilliant Mind in the Articles section
  
  
• In Modelling, we have a beautiful 1/32 Spitfire Mk.II "Borough of Lambeth" modelled by Hans-Peter Tschanz from Switzerland.

Another new occurrence on the site, introduced yesterday, are commercial ads. Why ads? Well, it is my long-term objective to support - wholly or partially - the cost of the site's operation with ads, and today I'm taking the first step in this direction. I'm not hoping to get a profit - considering the amount of man-hours I'm currently putting into it - but perhaps be able to expand the site with photo galleries, forum and other interactive features, many of which require more sophisticated hosting, more bandwidth or additional software. Time permitting, there's so much more I would like to add.

In this initial period, I will be trying Google textual ads to see how they will perform. Obviously I would like the ads to be relevant to the interests of our visitors. With the Google system, the ads are supposed to be matched automatically with the subject of each page. I understand that it may take one or two weeks for the Google system to "learn" which ads are the right ones, so I'm eager to see how good the results will be.

I hope you will find the ads a meaningful addition to the Spitfire Site.

Labels: history, modelling, site updates, webmaster

The problem of disappearing labels has been solved and all sections of the site can again be browsed by category as usual. I'm happy to say that the solution incorporates my first non-trivial PHP script. I would like to use more PHP scripting in the future, but somehow I never seemed to have time to learn it properly. Maybe this is the starting point.

I'd also like to include a link tip so that this post is not only for technical geeks. Spitfire Performance is a site worth checking by everyone interested in performance characteristics of the various Spitfire marks. The site is basically built around reports issued by A&AEE at Boscombe Down, RAE Farnborough and Air Fighting Development Unit. Each of these institutions preformed tests on various Spitfire marks as they appeared and during their first-line service. Besides an excessive array of charts, data sheets and scanned original documents, the Spitfire Performance site contains occasional commentary by squadron pilots. A comprehensive and highly recommended resource.

• Spitfire Performance

Labels: webmaster

Today I am still working on the technical solution to the problem of disappearing labels. In the meantime, here is a review of the recent press.

• I’ve got propeller off Spitfire that crashed in park
  The latest Spitfire wreck excavation in Merseyside Park, Liverpool, (see here for details) finds a rather unexpected conclusion - its (?) propeller being found in an attic. [Liverpool Echo]
  
  
• It is widely known that new Spitfire restorations to airworthiness are being undertaken with ever-smaller pieces of original airframes as a basis. If one is to believe the following articles, it could be something of a record in this area - a full Spitfire restoration started from a... single rivet - but then only if you ignore the fact that it was augmented by an incomplete fuselage of Spitfire RR232... Even so, it's an amazing effort, performed by devotion and perseverance of Mr Martin Phillips from Devon.
  
  
• Scrambled Spitfire gets closer to take-off [Telegraph]
  
• Global hunt to rebuild Spitfire [BBC News]
  
• Spitfire project is a labour of love [The Cornishman]
  


• A special event entitled A Celebration of Collections marked the official launched of Corgi die-cast model Battle of Britain Memorial Flight Collection issued to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Flight. Fittingly, the ceremony took place at BBMF Visitors Centre at RAF Coningsby.
  
  
• A look under the skin of Memorial Flight [Lincolnshire Echo]
  
• Battle of Britain models launched [Horncastle Today]

Labels: history, warbirds, webmaster

Last night I have updated the site with the following articles:

• The fifth and concluding part of the series Battle of Britain in the Words of Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding. This part describes the various measures undertaken by Fighter Command Headquarters to cope with the shortage of trained fighter pilots.
  
  
• Two new additions have been made also in the Historic Photographs section. These include images of the famous sharkmouth RAAF Spitfires on Morotai.

We have also a technical problem which appeared yesterday. Due to some service interruption on Blogger's side, the label metafeeds are no longer available. In ordinary terms this means that the Historic Photographs, Video and Art & Memorabilia sections cannot be browsed by category at the moment. New additions, however, are available as usual. I'm working on the solution.

Labels: site updates, webmaster

My Blogger software tells me that this is my 100th post in the Spitfire Site News. Wow! A milestone. I’ll celebrate it by taking a short look into how the site is performing.

Content statistics

The Spitfire Site was launched on 10th September 2007, and a quick calculation shows that 126 days have passed since the premiere day. One hundred blog posts in 126 days mean little more than five updates to the site every week, and I consider this to be a good achievement.

Before starting the site, I planned for about two updates every week based on the assumption that initially most of the material would have to be prepared entirely by myself. The reality exceeded my expectations by a margin. The voluntary support from the visitors in form of photos, articles, artwork and models has been much better than anticipated. It shows in the number of article pages which form the fabric of the site. Here are some statistics:

• 13 history articles


• 6 camouflage features


• 37 modelling articles, showing over 50 Spitfire models


• 56 posts in Historic Photographs


• 50 video posts


• 17 items in Art & Memorabilia

In total, this gives 179 content web pages. I’ve read somewhere on the web that a site needs to have at least 300-400 meaningful pages to keep the interest of a returning visitor. If this target is anything to go by, we’re well underway towards achieving it. Actually, Google has already counted “about 348” pages from the site in its search index, but this of course includes the front page and various indices.

Our visitors

As of this writing (January 2008), the site enjoys a steady flow of about 190 visits a day. Comparison with previous months shows a reassuring increase, from 115 daily visits in October and 155 visits in November.

According to Google Analytics, a total of 21,875 unique visitors were logged since the premiere day. 34% percent of these have visited the site more than once, or approximately 7500 people. Overwhelming!

The average visitor clicks her/his way through 9 pages of the site. This is a very good result indicating that the contents are met with interest.

Where do the visitors come from? The top ten countries this month are as follows:

1. United Kingdom 23.20%


2. United States 16.97%


3. Australia 6.78%


4. Canada 5.60%


5. Sweden 4.08%


6. France 4.00%


7. Germany 3.57%


8. Russia 3.37%


9. Japan 3.13%


10. Czech Republic 2.56%

Summary

Concluding this analysis I feel that the site has been off to a good start. The visitors have been hugely supportive, and I feel we have a good ground for further development of this site during 2008. Thanks to all and I hope you will find reasons to return to this site often.

This map shows which countries the Spitfire Site visitors come from. Darker shades of green correspond to higher number of visits

Click to enlarge image

Labels: webmaster

I'm back home from my journey to Warsaw, struggling today to configure me email so that I could continue using Microsoft Outlook together with my new Gmail account. Besides its nice web interface, Gmail offers both POP and IMAP protocols, each with its own idiosyncrasies. Of the two, IMAP is obviously the more attractive option, but it is rather new, and for whatever reason I couldn't use it for the default mail account in Outlook. All the tweaking has taken me the better part of the day. The good news is that all email is firmly being taken care of and I will start replying to messages as soon as I'm ready with these configuration experiments.

To summarize the Warsaw week, the Skalski exhibition at the Polish Army Museum turned out to have ended some weeks previously, despite the fact that the information about it is still available at the museum's website. The visit wasn't a waste of time, though. The museum has a sizable collection of armour, artillery and aircraft in its open-air display. This includes such interesting exhibits as the Yakovlev Yak-9, Ilyushin Il-2, and Petlyakov Pe-2, a comprehensive array of Soviet World War II armour or an enormous shell from the German Dora railway cannon. Sadly, the aircraft in particular were visibly affected by the long-term exposure to the elements and therefore in rather derelict state. The indoors part of the exhibition was, in my opinion, the weaker part of the museum, walking the visitor through an endless array of uniforms, weapons and paintings illustrating the many wars that the Poles fought throughout the centuries. No doubt expertly prepared but after a while rather monotonous. However, the overall impression was positive and the museum worth visiting.

[Photo: Zeke-PL, through Flickr]

Labels: webmaster

The New Year 2008 begins with a short interlude.

First of all, an attempt to standardise and improve my email management. Having managed multiple web sites as well as my work and private email, I find myself using a slowly but inevitably increasing number of email addresses.

Managing each email through a separate account is obviously a rather unpractical solution. Over the years I have tried a number of options to simplify my email routines. Eventually I settled down on a compromise whereupon all incoming email had been redirected to a single email account. This account is now being transferred to Google Mail and my old "master" account, which coincidentally but unfortunately was connected to my work, has been terminated.

How does it affect you? Not at all if you only keep sending your emails to me through the address listed on this site:. If you don't, please update your address book to make sure that the email address is set correctly.

The second news is definitely more inspirational. I'm away from home this week, spending a few days with my family in Warsaw, Poland. Warsaw is a dynamic, fascinating mixture of contemporary and past. There are many wartime memories to be witnesses here. No chance for spotting a Spitfire, though: the nearest aircraft museum (and the one which I've heard is well worth visiting) is located in Cracow, some 350 km south of the capital. However, Polish Army Museum in Warsaw has currently an exhibition devoted to Stanislaw Skalski, Polish leading fighter ace of World War II, and famous for his "Skalski's Circus", the elite Polish fighter unit in the Western Desert. I hope to find time for a visit to the museum tomorrow.

Stanislaw Skalski, then at the rank of Wing Commander, in the cockpit of his Mustang Mk. III, 1944

Labels: webmaster

It is time to prepare to celebrate the Christmas holidays with my family. I would like to take the opportunity to say thank you to all of you wonderful and enthusiastic Spitfire fans who use and enjoy this site. My special thanks go to the many helpful and knowledgeable people who came forward to support this site with their writing, photos, artwork, or commentary. During the almost four months since its launch, it's been a wonderful adventure beyond all expectations. I hope that we will all meet together in the New Year.

Have the merriest of holidays!

Martin Waligorski
Editor

Labels: webmaster

Three months have gone since the official launch of the Spitfire Site in mid-September. As it is also the end of the year, the time is right for summarizing the developments of the period. I feel I have a pretty good view of the visitors' statistics and trends due to the very useful Google Analytics. I will share some interesting numbers later on, but today I'd like to start with some of the visitors' comments about the Spitfire Site which appeared on the web.

I consider visitors' comments and reviews to be more valuable than numbers, not only because it is admittedly so nice to receive positive feedback. Links from other sites and discussion forums are also the proof of a site's recognition, and I'm glad to see the steady progress in this area. The comments also seem to confirm my initial analysis that even if many web pages were devoted to the Spitfire previously, there is a need for a site like this.

"Anyone interested in Spitfires should check this one out"
Hyperscale

"Hopefully this should build into the biggest and best on-line resource on the Spitfire."
Dinger's aviation pages

"Lots of Spitfire inspiration...I've added it to my favorites"
LSP

"A fantastic idea, long overdue!"
Hyperscale forum

"Diese Site ist aus einer IPMS-Domain entstanden, daher gibt es dort neben vielen guten Vorbildphotos auch etliche (feine!) Plastikmodelle zu sehen. Vorbeischauen sollte sich also lohnen."
kartonbau.de


vif2ne.ru

"It looks really good, but then that's hardly surprising given the fantastic quality of the IPMS Stockholm site. "
LSP

"Ett ambitiöst on-line dokumentationsprojekt om alla aspekter på Spitfire"
sv.wikipedia.org

Labels: webmaster

British military airfields in mainland Europe, 1944-1945
Click on the image to enlarge

I have already mentioned in this blog that trying to describe the operational history of the Spitfire in a somewhat cohesive way requires a whole lot of basic terminology and facts to be sorted out. A good example of this is a subject as seemingly trivial as sorting out RAF Ranks, another, and one which is a subject of constant consideration, is geography - the names of places. Readers may recall my earlier encounter with this subject in conjunction with my description of the defence of Malta (see RAF Takali or RAF Ta Qali).

My work this week concentrates on post-D-day developments in Europe. As part of this work I have decided to chart all the British 2nd TAF airfields on the continent, from D-Day to VE-Day. Unlike the more or less permanent air stations built in the United Kingdom, many airfields in mainland Europe were temporary landing grounds to be used by the tactical air forces in close support of the moving front. For this reason, airfields were assigned and referred to by coded numbers. In general, British airfields were consecutively numbered, but with a B-prefix, from B-1 to B-174. American airfields were given A-, Y-, or R-, prefixes and numbered consecutively from 1 to 99 .

Easy? So far. Sorting out the geography is, however, another matter. Some places are spelled differently in different sources: Coulombes or Coulombs? Brustem or Brusthem? Other airfields were located in rural areas between multiple villages, so a place could be referred to as Rucqueville, Martragny or Vaussieux depending on the context. And so on.

To sort out the data, I have decided to plot all the airfields on a map. This, in turn, brought a question of which mapping software to use. Preferably, I wanted non-copyrighted base maps so that I would have no restrictions using the result of my plotting on this site or in any other context. Furthermore, an interactive and programmable map system would be nice so that I could retain the opportunity of post-processing and combining my data rather than merely drawing a static image.

I spent a good part of the evening scanning the available interactive map systems on the web, starting with Google Maps, through Google Earth, Map24, Yahoo! Maps and a couple more. Sadly, very few of the systems allow your own objects to be freely added to the map. Google is a notable exception in this respect, with dedicated markup language available in both Google Earth and Google Maps. However, map imagery in these two products is copyrighted material and its use is strictly limited. A general remark is also that public domain maps are difficult to come by.

The solution came in the form of World Wind, a 3D interactive world viewer and therefore a sibling to Google Earth. Originally developed by NASA, World Wind is an open source initiative. True, the satellite images do not hold the same quality as those used by Google, but they have been provided by NASA and therefore are in public domain. I found that I could easily transfer my Google Earth *.kml markups to World Wind and produce decent overview maps with minimum effort. Excellent. This tool is not perfect, but if you have similar needs, you may want to give it a try. My next task will be trying to plot mission routes, we'll see how it goes!

The resulting reference feature about continental RAF airfields will be published in the Articles section soon.

Labels: history, webmaster

I'm away travelling this week: as mentioned previously, I am leading a training course on SOA, service-oriented IT architectures. Somewhat surprisingly, my client requested the course to take place in Mombasa, Kenya, at their annual company conference... so here I am. Africa is fascinating and full of contrasts, teaching requires a lot of energy so I'd rather restrict myself to this one post during the week, commencing more reqular updates again next week.

However, I'd like to share my impressions about the newest book acquisition which became my companion during this trip. A leisurely visit to a bookstore is one of the better things one can do during a stop between the flights at Heathrow. This time I grabbed Joshua Levine's Forgotten Voices of the Blitz and the Battle of Britain, in paperback edition and sold at 2 pounds' discount.

The sole purpose of this purchase was to have something easy to read during my next flight to Africa. For this purpose, I was attracted by the non-sequential nature of the book. However, it turned out to be lots more than that and I read it end-to-end during the following days. There have been hundreds of history books about the Battle of Britain and I can say I have read a few of them before. This one is different from the most and worth having even if you are already familiar with the events of the BoB.

Basically, the entire book is a collection of short excerpts from interviews, radio broadcasts etc. made with people who experienced the Battle of Britain and the Blitz first-hand. Imperial War Museum’s sound archive is quoted as the prime source of information. The gallery of interviewees is vast, including not only pilots, but soldiers, airmen, fire-fighters, air-raid wardens, civilians, WAAFs and more. Each short piece constitutes a small story in its own right, and they have been cleverly organized into subject areas. Everything about the Battle of Britain is there - the defeat in France, the air battles, fate of parachuting airmen, McIndoe's guinea pigs, night life, the bombing, the Poles, the stress, misery and horror, but also humor and glory.

One is struck by the directness of the story - there is no commentary by a historian giving you a "balanced" view of the events. On the contrary, if various people perceived events differently, it is dutifully reflected in the text. This kind of "raw" history is trustworthy, direct, moving. It gives the reader an insight about the people and their lives under these extraordinary times that few other history books can provide.

If there is anything missing in the book it's the larger share of German voices. Contrary to what is suggested on the cover, these are limited to interviews with comparatively few German aircrew, contrasting with the vast array of British sources.

If you are interested in broader wartime history, this book is a highly recommended read.

Labels: history, webmaster

I'm sure that everyone has noticed that I have been away from this blog for about a week. It's been a hectic week at work; I've been working with preparing material for the new training course on SOA, service-oriented IT architectures which I will be leading later this month. Interestingly, SOA has just been voted the most confusing acronym of the year, which should explain to you beyond doubt that producing a three-day training course on this subject is a major undertaking!

As usual for me, writing something new of this magnitude not only consumes a lot of time but requires unrestricted attention; I had to put all other writing aside. I know this pattern from other situations, too: working intensively with the development of this site, my book writing has temporarily lost momentum; fortunately, I haven't lost any interest in completing it, so please bear with me.

Fortunately, I have managed to add something new here and there at this site, too. Here is the sum of week's updates:

• A new and welcome addition the history section, is the article Battle of Britain in the Words of Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding. A transcript of Dowding's Despatch submitted to the Secretary of State for Air in 1941, this document provides unique insight in the mind and work of one of the great strategists of air war and the winner of the Battle of Britain. This is the first of three planned parts of this feature.
  


• New images have been added in Historic Photographs section, bringing the total of images in this archive to 29. The progress in this section may be seen as rather slow, but I'd rather spend time researching and providing proper captions for each image than just upload a miscellany of anonymous photographs. Furthermore, the copyright status of each photo is being researched and, whenever possible, established, which naturally is taking additional effort.
  


• We also have a new video in the Video Section. There are now 32 videos to view in total.
  


• Last but not least, the newest addition in modelling is the next batch of Tim Prosser's Spitfire models. This time with some rather rare kits such as Ventura and Aeroteam.
  

Adding to the week's work was a regular monthly update of the IPMS Stockholm Magazine. The latter includes part II of Raul Hrubisko's model collection of American aircraft i FAA service which I think enthusiasts of British & Commonwealth aviation history may find interesting. It includes, among other things, this beautiful series of Vought Kingfishers in Australian markings.

That's all for today; I hope to be able to post new additions soon. In fact I have now a healthy pipeline of contributions to process (thanks to all!), including more models, Spitfire walkarounds, airshow photos and even the first commercial inquiries. Please check back often.

Labels: site updates, webmaster

Regrettably the site problems which began early this week accelerated during the last two days, leading to the site being completely down for over 24 hours. This morning the server was up again, and I discovered that the ISP had to revert to backups to recover the site - presumably an effect of a server change or some serious re-installation. The good news is that things appear to be working fine right now and I hope that problems such as this will not occur again in the near future.

All this, of course, lead to a lag in site updates. In particular, I have previously received an email from one of our readers asking for help with identifying a Spitfire-related keepsake of his father. This item will be the first to initiate the Art & Memorabilia section which I intend to start next.

Another disappointment, although of a different kind, occurred on Wednesday. I was on a day business trip to Oslo, Norway for a meeting, and luckily the programme of my visit was completed earlier than expected. What do you do with two hours free time in the Norwegian capital? How about taking a detour to Royal Norwegian Air Force Museum in Gardermoen. Could it be more convenient than having a first-class aircraft museum just next door to an international airport?

The Gardermoen aircraft collection is located just on the opposite side of the airport than the main terminal, easy enough to reach by cab, although it took considerable effort explaining to my driver that there was an aviation museum in the area. Apparently it's not a sough-after tourist destination, and indeed, its advertising appears to be very modest, if at all noticeable. Knowing that the museum is located on the site of a former World War Two Luftwaffe air base wasn't directly helpful.

The museum houses an extensive collection of aircraft, including a number of rare types. Sitting in the cab I kept blaming myself for not taking my camera with me. There would be no photos of the Spitfire PR XI and its "bowser" wing, of the unique Heinkel He 111P or the yet-unrestored Junkers Ju 88C-2.Anyway, I told myself, just being able to walk through the museum would be worth it.

The museum is located in a modern and capacious building of wood and glass which looks appealing. There is no collection of miscellaneous aircraft corroding outside - always a good sign. The cab arrived at the entrance, and ... it turned out that the museum was closed that day. You can imagine my disappointment, Indeed, a small sign beside the entrance informed that the museum is only open on Tuesdays, Thursdays and during the weekends.

So all I will remember from my visit to Gardermoen museum, at least this time, was a silhouette of a Spitfire, apparently placed in the prime spot of the exhibition, visible through the glass. Well, at least I don't have to regret a missed photo opportunity.

Better luck next week.

Labels: warbirds, webmaster

Yesterday there were repeated problems with the availability of this site. I have contacted support and been assured that they're working on the issue, so it all should be fixed by now.

This event brought me into a technical mood today, so I decided to fix some outstanding technical problems. Unknowingly to me, the last developments of the layout in the blog sections lead to bad rendering of the pages in Firefox (although they did not display any problems in Internet Explorer 7 or Opera). Despite all the development in browsers' support for cascading style sheets, it would seem that some odd browser bugs will always pop up, no matter how CSS-compliant one's design is. I found it frustrating that issues with browsers' deviation from standards steal so much time, the very time which could be put in more productive tasks - such as adding content to the site. Well, I hope that I have succeeded in improving this so that everything looks as intended and fully readable in all three major browsers.

Labels: webmaster

Yesterday I have initiated another new section on the site, this one holding a collection of videos.

• The Video Section has been initiated with 24 video clips in categories: Airshows, Computer-generated, Flight simulators, Museums, Radio-controlled, Warbirds.
  

Work on this section started only yesterday and I'm quite proud to mention that all set-up work plus posting fifteen or so initial videos took only a bit more than two hours. Something like this has never happened to me before as a webmaster... I feel know that this site is finally residing on a solid platform and that the results may indeed translate to increased editorial efficiency. Good news. I will certainly continue to explore these possibilities.

I must admit that I haven't initially planned for an excessive video library on this site. However, I felt that providing sights and sounds of the Spitfire, particularly in the air, was important to make the user experience of the Spitfire complete. Only later when the site was already published I took time to examine YouTube's enormous library of video clips and its use policies and noticed that there were many interesting videos which could be embedded in a site like this one. And so the idea was born.

Selecting and posting videos from YouTube and other sources (and admittedly, some of the better ones are not very easy to find), I will apply my normal editorial standards in terms of video quality, credits, and copyright policies.

The initial set of 24 videos represents a wide range of subjects, from airshows through documentaries to RC models and computer animations. This breadth is intentional. One of the interesting aspects of the Spitfire and its wartime history is the impression it has left on the collective mind of the society and popular culture, through things like movies, gaming, art, memorabilia, modelling. Therefore, rock videos or anime with the Spitfire have their place on this site, too - even if they, in the strict sense, could not stand the test of historical accuracy. We have one such video uploaded already.

Labels: site updates, videos, warbirds, webmaster

Today marks the start of a new section on the site, Media Library.

• First to go are Historic Photographs, of which 11 have been added for starters.

• Differentiating the layout between main and label pages. Not providing specific template tags for this is an incomprehensible omission on the part of Blogger.


• Differentiating headings between main and label pages


• Descriptive headings at the archive pages

Lastly in this very technical briefing, an interesting observation about Google. I noticed yesterday that the photographs section has already been indexed by Google, despite it not being previously linked anywhere from the site, or indeed, anywhere from the web. Had the pages not been generated by Blogger this would have never happened, as search engine crawlers traditionally only used links to navigate to pages. Yet all the pages in Historic Photographs section were indexed already before any links were available. This seems to confirm the hypothesis that Google favors Blogger blogs over other sites in terms of search engine presence and indexing latency. Good news for this site.

Labels: site updates, webmaster

Tonight I have been trying to complete the layout of the Spitfire Site News and make other minor layout refinements.

After a month or so of posting, news section grew with sufficiently many articles to make the older ones disappear and become difficult to find again. The purpose of the change is therefore easier navigation and providing better organized archive pages.

As you can see at this very page, there is now a sidebar along its right edge which provides quick links to older posts and monthly archives. The archive pages have been reworked and provide an overview with links to all posts in the actual month.

Another novelty is the addition of category labels for each news post. At the bottom of this one you should see "Labels: webmaster" which indicates that this post is about technical development of the site. A link allows you to quickly access other posts on this subject. This way you will be able to browse only recent site updates, videos or history articles in Spitfire Site News. I still have a little bit to go to make this feature really usable. For example, Blogger may provide a RSS feed separately for each category (see this example for history articles). Neat.

Comments to posts have also been reformatted so that they are easier to read.

Blogger is great stuff, even if I'm missing several important features in it, such as ability to browse directly to next / previous post (invaluable for photoblogs) and better support for categorizing of posts.

The reason that I spend so much time learning and developing page templates in Blogger is that I intend to use it for other purposes in the near future. A library of archive photos or videos, for example, seems to be feasible application of the same basic functionality, and I intend to give it a serious try rather than developing static pages by hand. I will keep you posted.

Last but not least, another reflection from the webmaster workshop - presence on Google. You may think that things are happening very fast on the Internet, but I can assure you that not all of them do. When starting up a new website such as this, no experience is more agonizing than waiting for the Googlebot (Google's indexing robot) to start indexing the site properly. Not to mention other search engines. Googlebot just seems not to care about new sites, even if they are interlinked with others, and it can take months before it decides to start visiting the site with any frequency worth noting.

Two days ago a breakthrough has been made: Googlebot was here at Spitfire Site, for the first time since the beginning of August (!) when the entire site was basically a prototype. I sure hope I will see it here more often.

Labels: webmaster

My book project developing int the Spitfire in Service section has by all means only just begun its presence on the web with only one sample chapter available online, others still residing on my computer at home. Considering this I'm all the more glad to have found the first link from an external site to my work. The Toronto Post's article on Air Chief Marshal Sir Keith Park has this chapter listed under External Links.

Perhaps one link is a small thing, but it brings a lot of satisfaction as this site is only about to take off...

Another good news today is that Google finally seems to recognize this site, so searching for "Spitfire Site" should be an alternative to remembering this site's URL.

Labels: webmaster

Another day of layout refinement. Apart from the usual dwelling in the site's stylesheet, I have entirely reworked the front page of the site. I'm quite pleased with the result. The new layout is markedly simplistic, much simpler than, for example, my previous work at the IPMS Stockholm site. However, for this very reason it should be easier to overview. Also, an important aspect of a site like this is clear information about what's new, and this has now taken a prominent place at the top of the front page.

Another new addition today are the yellow sidebars asking for visitors' (meaning your) input - here and here. Indeed, I believe that the raison d'etre of a site like this is to develop into an open collaborative project. So please sent me your opinions and suggestions to editor@spitfiresite.com. No critique or suggestion is too small and all will be used to continuously improve this publication.



Lastly, a comment on one of the images added today, the small vignette of the Spitfire Site News. I have been looking for a suitable symbol for site news/blog other than just another Spitfire photo. The idea came in the form of a notebook and pencil, which is no coincidence. One of my favourite activities as a schoolboy during long and boring classes had been drawing sketches of aircraft. I think I was pretty good at this, judging from the few drawings from that time that are still in my possession. Naturally, the Spitfire dominated the lot as a subject, along with many Mosquitoes, Hurricanes and an occasional Curtiss P-40, Tempest or Stuka. Having found a stock image of a notebook and a pencil, I couldn't resist fabricating a "sketch" of a Spitfire as a tribute to these cherished memories.

Labels: webmaster

Coding for the navigation menu to the left has been completed today. I like the result, and although only two sections are currently working - Spitfire Site News and Spitfire in Service (the rest of the links being currently broken), I think it makes a whole lot of difference to the "feel" of the site. I hope you'll like the result and more importantly, find it easy to navigate the site.

I have also added two useful gadgets at the top of each page, allowing to bookmark the page in Internet Explorer and del.icio.us respectively. Also, you will find a link to RSS Feed for this site at the top of the front page.

Finally this site becomes a professionally-produced online book as intended! Just a few more layout tweaks and I will be able to commence publishing.

Labels: webmaster

Work continues today with establishing the structure of the site's principal navigation - the menu in the left column as well as the "location bar" at the top of each page. To facilitate smooth integration between the different pages of this site I'd rather have these features generated in JavaScript than physically copied between pages. On the other hand, caution should be applied so that spidering robots and non-script-enabled browsers can still be supported.

Casual readers who are more interested in aircraft than this Internet mumbo-jumbo are kindly asked to bear with me. With a bit of luck "normal" articles should start to appear on this site within two weeks. Establishing a proper technical solution is just a necessary first step.

By he way, have you noticed this brand-new Airfix Spitfire yet? It is the newest addition to the 50-year long Airfix line of plastic Spitfire kits. Fittingly, it is also the first entirely new product of that company since their bankruptcy end the subsequent purchase by Hornby last year.

Here it is, and I can recommend a review of it by Brett Green of Hyperscale. Of interest is also this discussion thread at Aircraft Resource Center.

Labels: modelling, webmaster

Technical development of the blog continued also today. I have left the remaining layout improvements (in which, as it appears now, all fundamental issues have been solved satisfactorily) and spent several hours building a script which will extract the headings of the newest blog posts so that appropriate links could be displayed automatically on the site's front page.

To do this, I intend to make use of Blogger's automatically generated RSS (Atom) feed. This morning I have located a neat ASP class which can process an RSS feed and extract the relevant information. I found this one here. As is often the case, it took quite a lot of cleaning up, debugging and rewriting to get the script to work. It was still much quicker than writing a similar thing from scratch.

I'm almost there!

Labels: webmaster

So it's time for (another) picture publishing trial using the Blogger software. Again, it will be interesting to see how Blogger handles the omage itself in terms of resolution, resizing quality and so on.

As can be seen, the results are satisfactory, if not prefect. The image has been resized to just over 410 pixels across despite setting the picture size to "large". Some 600+ pixels would be much better. Resizing quality is OK with no disturbing JPEG artefacts.

What is disturbing, though, is the CSS layout issues. A post with an image generated the large extra whitespace below its last line. Closer investigation showed that Blogger ended the image article with <div style="clear:both;"> and extra bottom margin. Fortunately there was a setting in Blogger to turn off all margin-clearing div tags.

Labels: webmaster

Today is the premiere day for the Spitfire Site blog. Almost every site has a blog these days, and I will be spending a few evening this week to get this one up and running. As this site enters a period of significant built-up and (hopefully) frequent updates, I will use the blog to keep you posted about the progress of my editorial work, new additions to the site and so on.

Let's begin with a piece of general information. This site, although new, is no