I have recently come across your site and today have been having a play with some sample records.

For personal data, bulk uploading of a .csv file (to a defined format, of course) with date and location included would be much easier than working with location and date pre-entry.

From my own records the historical data is held with a year and to establish full dates now would be hard and in some cases impossible. Could dates of just year or month and year be available settings?

Currently the database is for listed types. Data (for example) of the whole UK G- register is available. Do you have plans to incorporate such long-gone aircraft? ( I sampled a few G-A records which show levels of detail beyond such sources).

B787 'troubled teens' shown as 'not built' and as 'scrapped'. They certainly were built, albeit not delivered. Terminology needs review. 38617 duplicated in error.

What backup/data security is there for an individual's data (accessible by individual) as opposed to whole database backup?

All in all this is an interesting project which certainly has significant potential.

Rgds,

Pete

Hi Pete and welcome to the site. I came across the site last year and and have found it excellent for logging my records. Like you, I've got records going back many years, to the 1980s, and I've been steadily adding them in.

I also don't have exact dates for aircraft seen prior to the late 90s. What I do is log them as the first of January for the year, or best guess year, that I saw them.

For types not listed you can either add them manually, using the "add multiple sightings" entry which allows you to add the type manually. This won't go onto the main database but will go into your personal records. Alternatively ask the database editors to add it; I've found them extremely helpful and accommodating in adding additional types and aircraft, including old Soviet props, helicopters and even Buran space shuttles. See the "sending corrections/additions" thread in the forum.

Hope this helps, Dougie

Hi Pete,

I'm glad you found us - now be sure to pass on the word to everyone you know and help us grow the community!

Thanks also for the feedback, let me try and address some of your points:

• CSV import - this is something we would like to add, but there are a few challenges involved. Some registrations are used more than once - there's no easy way to determine which of the multiple records the user intended to add. This is why the "Add Multiple Sighting" tool currently only works with active registrations, or old records where only a single result is returned. We will take a look at this at some point in the future and see if there is something we can do.

• Date format - You need to enter a full date, so that we can store it in date format, then do reports based on date (such as ordering by most recent, etc). As suggested by Dougie, enter the 1st of Jan if you are unsure.

• Database - We are always looking to expand the database and add as much as possible. We have a team of data editors who can add aircraft on request, just post in one of the threads with the details you want to add. We have recently been adding all military aircraft which are now appearing on sites like FR24 etc. However, you can still record a sighting even for aircraft that are not in our database, so this shouldn't hold you back.

• 787 Updates - thanks for the info. If you repost this to one of the corrections threads, the data editors can take a look at this for you.

• Backup - Both the registration database and user data is backed up 4 times per day, so in the event of a failure we can restore to a recent backup with minimal loss to both the registration database and users sightings. Access to users data and backups is restricted to authorised personnel only.

Any other questions, let me know :)

Many thanks for the response which raises interesting points, most particularly over multiple uses of registrations. The date relationship here, particularly of US bits and French test registration use, is clearly vital. I assume you are dependent upon your contributors' own records?

My backup comments are partly addressed in your daily working regime but it appears that a user cannot access/save an extract with his own sighting records in it, if I read correctly?

Pete