Searching for Scale on the Internet

from "Bill's Corner" in Positive Incidents

You want some documentation for a Scale model? In the past, that meant digging into your collection of pictures and drawings from magazines. If that didn’t provide you with enough information, then you had to look for a book on the airplane. Hopefully, you could find one in print and for a reasonable cost.

If you’re looking to build a model for Scale competition, you’ll still need to get some form of official printed documentation. For the 99% of us who are really just building for our own satisfaction, there’s a lot of material available on the Internet—both for free and for pay. The problem is in finding that material. Then, once you’ve found it, what do you do with it?

I’m not going to try to list commercial sites that sell documentation, nor sites that provide free files. If I did make a list, I guarantee many of the sites will have closed down or changed their addresses by the time you get to reading it. That’s the way of the Internet.

Let’s start by setting a few ground rules:
      1. I’m not going to tell you how to do anything illegal. There’s enough free stuff out there, so there should be no reason to steal anything.
      2. I use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE). Yes, there are other good Web browsers out there, but Internet Explorer is the one I use in my day job as a computer technician. That’s what I’m the most familiar with. Likewise, I use only Microsoft Windows at work, so that’s what we use at home. I have no experience with Firefox, Apple, and so forth, so I’m not going to claim I’m competent to discuss them.
      3. When you surf the Internet, you are roaming through a wild and uncontrolled place. Make sure you run a virus scan on anything you download.

Searching
I like to use Google as my first search engine (a search engine is a Web site that you use for searches). After I’ve exhausted it, I’ll go to Dogpile, Jeeves, Yahoo, or another such engine. Why use multiple engines? Because not all search engines give the same priorities to each Web site. A site that’s at the end of one search engine’s list may be at the top of another one’s.

There are some differences in how you phrase searches for each engine, but usually “punctuation” is consistent. Here are what I consider the most important bits of punctuation in an Internet search:

1. The + (plus) sign shows phrases or terms that must be found.

2. The – (minus) sign shows phrases or terms that indicate a site you don’t want to see, even if the term you want to see is on it.

3. Quotation marks show phrases you want searched for or to contain words with spaces, minus signs, dashes, or plus signs.

Let’s assume I want information on a Piper Cub. If I put the following into Google: +cub, I should get back every site with information about the J-3, provided that site includes the word Cub on it. Of course, I’ll also get every site that mentions baby animals, the Chicago Cubs, Cub Scouts, and so forth. In fact, when I ran a Google search with that command, I got 1,380,000 sites—bit much to look at.

How do I get rid of the ones I don’t want?

That’s where the next piece of punctuation comes in, the - (minus sign). I have to put that sign before some keyword that explains what I don’t want. So, my search would now be: +cub –Chicago –baby –scouts.

This command tells the search engine to find every Web site with the word Cub, and also ignore any site that contains the words Chicago, Baby, or Scouts. Also note that there is no space between the + or – signs and the words that follow. This is important. Spaces tell the search engine where one term ends and another begins.

Will this get rid of every unwanted site?

Nope. My test search still turned up 16,300 sites. Why? Because there are a lot of other uses for the word Cub. You can either keep adding “-whatevers,” or else you can just skim through what you get.

You can try another technique to restrict the search: quotation marks. Most search engines will only look for the complete phrase contained within the quotes, and they will only look for those words in that specific order. Also, you must use quotation marks if there’s a blank space anywhere in a term you’re looking for.

Let’s look at some examples:

My first search is for: +Piper +Cub. This searches for every site containing the word Piper and every site containing the word Cub. On Google, that gave me 647,000 possible sites. Everything from bagpipes to tiger cubs; too much!

So, let me rephrase my search to use quotes: “Piper Cub” (Note that we don’t really need the + symbol if there is only one term in our search. Makes sense, right?)

That gives me only 303,000 sites to look at. Why so many? Because the term Piper Cub is commonly used to designate any small airplane. We need to thin it back down.

“So,” you say, “I see. All I need to do is make ‘Piper Cub J-3’ my search and I’ll get just what I want.” Well, that particular line gives us 10,800 possible sites. Why so many? Because it includes full-scale and model J-3s, plus books, movies, and so forth.

You may also notice your search engine ask if you really mean “J-3” and not “J3”. So, let’s try the same search, but without the dash between the J and the 3.

Hey, it only returned 8,870 sites this time. Why? Every airplane person knows J3 and J-3 are the same airplane. Yes, but computers are very literal. The better search engines will try to figure out what you are asking for, but they can’t always do so. Not only that, but let’s try asking for the following: “Piper J-3 Cub.”

We should get the same number of returns as “Piper Cub J-3”, right? Nope. We get 69,900—almost seven times as many as the first time. Again, it’s that literal-mindedness of the search engine. It is looking for the exact set of letters and numbers, in the exact order as you put in your request. Think about it. We know that John Smith is the same guy as Smith, John, but a computer can’t make that connection.

So, plan to make multiple searches, with little variations each time.

Before you think I’m crazy telling you to do all of these searches, let me tell you some tricks to save not only the Web sites you find, but the searches themselves. Now, I will remind you that I only work with IE, so my instructions will relate to it. The other Web browsers all should have similar functions; I just can’t tell you how to use them.

1. Create a file folder somewhere. I like to put it on my desktop, for example. Label it so you know it has to do with what you’re looking for. When I start a project, I label the project with the name of the airplane I’m looking for, i.e., Cub.

2. Open your Web browser and do a search.

3. If the search results look good, click on “File,” then “Send,” then “Send shortcut to desktop.” The link it sends to your desktop will contain the results of your search.

4. Minimize your browser window.

5. Rename the shortcut to something helpful (i.e., the search phrase you used “Piper Cub”).

6. Drag the shortcut you’ve just created and drop it into the Cub folder. Now, you can open that folder and rerun that search at another time.

7. As you go through sites you find interesting, use the same method to create links to those sites and save them.

8. Create more folders, or subfolders, for pictures, paintings, and 3-views you may want to use.

I recommend doing it this way, instead of making sites “Favorites,” because this way you don’t clog up your Favorites folder.

Okay, let’s tighten up our searches and start looking for something more specific. Let’s say, you have pictures, but you want a good 3-view. So, let’s try to look for 3-views: +“Piper J-3 Cub” +“3-views.”

That gives us 56 sites to look at. Just to be safe, let’s also look at leaving out the minus sign in “3-views” and see what we get: +“Piper J-3 Cub” +“3views.”

How about nothing? No sites found. Again, it’s that literalness. So, let’s try putting a space between the “3” and the word “views” +“Piper J-3 Cub” +“3 views.”

Hmmm, 13 returns; better. But, we’ve missed something. Remember, I said the search engine was literal? Let’s try another shot at +“Piper J-3 Cub” +“3-views,” but leave out the “s” in views. +“Piper J-3 Cub” +“3 view.”

Wow, 257 returns instead of 56! Think about it. Both the word “view” and “views” contain the word “view”, but only “views” contains the word “views.” Leave off the plurals.

Hang on, I’ve got one more ‘gotcha’ for you …

Most of the sites on the Internet were set up by amateurs. Sometimes, their enthusiasm far outweighs their typing skills. Just for fun, let’s try changing our earlier search to one for “Pipper Cub.” Would you believe 453 sites have the misspelling on them? That’s 453 potential sites for useful information about an airplane you may want to build.

Where misspelling really becomes important is when you’re doing a harder-to-find model, especially one made in a foreign country. Worst of all, one made in a country that doesn’t use the western alphabet. Are you sure you spelled Messerschmitt right? How about Polikarpov? Worse yet, did the person with the Web site spell it the same way you did? If you aren’t sure you’re doing it right, do multiple searches, using slight variations each time.

One final tip about searching: If you know the “N” number of a particular airframe, you can search for that. You may be lucky and get some good information from it. Q