SATCOS WHIPPING BOY

The main information that has been published in the reputable-ish media has come from a single source - the TCT camp. From what I see there has been plenty of opportunity to make it clear this was not a SOLO venture.
As an example this is a quote from her in PILOT magazine:

"Although this was primarily a solo flight, certainly at the outset, I often took members of the crew and sponsors with me in the Stearman for reasons of expediency or indeed just so that they could share the experience."

Why continue to promote it as a SOLO trip and then fudge around it by saying it was a good idea to give others jollies. I would be interested to know who flew with her and on what leg(s) of the journey.

Again with the article in the Aviationist we have this quote:
The journey is not going to be made purely solo, as it involves the second plane with a film crew...

Why not take this opportunity to state that there would be a multi-thousand hour pilot in the aircraft with her?

The so-called reliable media have been fed what the TCT camp want them to see/hear. It is now unraveling and it often takes input from the unreliable-media to get people taking notice.

I think there a a couple of unimpeachable sources on this forum, some perhaps trying to make their statements on the wiki page but they keep getting deleted.

regards
SWB

Whirlybird

In the editorial of the most recent edition of Pilot, the editor and all the staff are querying TCT's claims. I assume this is an acceptable source to include?

hillbillyholiday

Seems like a pretty good source to me. Personally, I would just delete the article -- she isn't a pioneer in her field and the trophy doesn't seem that notable -- but any nomination would likely attract a raft of hardcore "inclusionists" and there are plenty of sources to demonstrate "notability".

(Sorry for slow replies, moderation.)

Hairyplane

The statue is lovely. They surely aren't going to place it there permanently?

Sorry, but isn't it well known that anything bronze - plaques, statues, whatever - are fair game for those who scour the country looking to steal it?

I wonder how many important works of art, war memorial/ bridge plaques etc have been spirited away over the years by those who have no qualms whatsoever about chopping up our nations heritage and flogging it for a fraction of its true value?

I'll give poor Amy to the end of the year.

Alternatively - please mount it in a far more prominent place if you don't want to lose it.

HP

Union Jack

Alternatively - please mount it in a far more prominent place if you don't want to lose it.

Good point, Hairyplane. How about the front cockpit of the Spirit of Artifice? Oh, hang on - there's someone there already....

Jack

Piltdown Man

Not every TCT media hatch has been bolted down. Comments can be made on TCT's YouTube clips. These will require her PR people to put in a lot more effort to keep her laundry clean.

PM

Mike Flynn

In reply to HillyBilly
I think most of us would agree she has achieved nothing worthy of actually having a wiki entry. The two journeys she undertook were extremely well funded and designed to promote Boeing and Artemis.

Many pilots undertake genuine long distance solo flights every year but do not warrant wiki entries.

If she is entitled to a wiki article it follows that Ewald Gritsch must also qualify as he restored the Spirit of Artemis and has admitted he was in the front seat throughout.

Aslthough reference to the two accidents has now reappeared the helicopter is described as damaged while the CAA website lists it as destroyed. G-LHXL http://publicapps.caa.co.uk/modalapp...llregmark=LHXL

Why not just delete the article?

It appears she is just using wiki as a promotional tool

The list below has now appeared. Appearances with an aircraft worthy of a wiki entry? If they were Barry Tempest would have a massive wiki page.

Wageslave

Quote; Wikipedia.
My italics.

Isn't this statement just a little bit more than simply disingenuous?

It implies that the film crew, support crew and sponsors were "often" invited to fly in the Stearman. Do we not understand that out of 36 sectors she flew with one particular ATPL on 32 occasions and the remaining 4 were solo. That doesn't seem to leave much room for the other members of the "team" to fly with her, does it?

Oh! I see! They were "often" invited but Ewald always had the seat. My mistake.

"Sponsors"....

Who are they?

Did we know "sponsors" came on the jolly too?

If so, who?

Wouldn't conveniently be someone called Ewald, would it?

I smell smoke and mirrors.

BatteryMaster

The Wiki page would surely be better off removed if it is to remain in its current heavily edited state without key identified issues being allowed to remain - it is presently beginning to read like some sort of convoluted LinkedIn page. Unnecessary attempts to embellish and skirt around the primary issues identified here and elsewhere.

More major public figures have information added within minutes of stories being published (before an analysis of truthfulness can take place) and it is therefore baffling as to why things should differ on this page.

Mike Flynn

There is so much rubbish and padding on her wiki page which mirrors her so called talks.
Take this refering to the South Africa trip.


So she spent years 'looking for a biplane that could cope with the heat'?

A phone call to the Tiger Moth Club of South Africa would have told her the DH82A happily copes with the heat.
The Stearman is nothing like the De Havilland that Lady Mary Heath flew. It is substantialy larger and not of the period being an American WW2 trainer. Of course I doubt Boeing would have stumped up big wadges of sponsorship if the Spirit of Artemis was British.

I fail to see what point the picture on her wiki article serves.
Wrong aeroplane dear. Amy flew a Tiger Moth named Jason.

If she really did want to 'emulate' Lady Mary Heath and Amy Johnson then flying a DeHavilland
was the only option. Plus of course doing it all SOLO

Wageslave

Jay Sata Quite so.

My next question is this.

Where exactly - I mean exactly, did the Spirit of Artifice end up in Winslow?

All the statements I can find suggest a loss of power immediately after take-off but Winslow's runways are huge for a Stearman so why on earth was an off airfield landing necessary, and how did power lines come into play on an airfield?
Or perhaps the problem wasn't exactly "on take off" and occurred some time after by which you'd expect the aircraft to be at many hundreds of feet or more before it apparently encountered those unavoidable power lines in its path.

Can anyone pinpoint the accident site exactly?

NearlyStol

This story is unbelievable ; How can anyone be so stupid to think that people with any
connection to aviation could be deceived by this total sham.
I would love to see her log book entries, and those of Ewald.
How much has been entered as P1 ?

robin

What do you think it would show? Does Ewald need the hours?

If she claims the hours and he doesn't, then it won't matter a hill of beans.

Planemike

Lets have it right, actually a deH 60G Moth..

canopener

Hillbillyholiday I find your involvement in this saga quite remarkable to say the least,you appear to be someone of a legal persuasion given the content of your posts?Are you a self appointed busy body or do you represent "wiki" in some official capacity?
You are dismissive of the tabloid press reports and remove any reference to them but are more than happy to allow the severely embellished,factually incorrect self promotion of TCT to remain.You also question the integrity of the source "controversy over flights",you seem to operate under a set of double standards Jethro.

BatteryMaster

I find it rather puzzling also - when stories emerge concerning more widely-known personalities, information relating to the reports appears almost immediately on their Wikipedia page. Surely fact-checking cannot occur in these instances also? If you rely on facts, where was the information about her holding a CPL and Instructor rating obtained from, as that aspect of her career has taken a while to emerge even here with Jay Sata's welcome digging.

Wikipedia pages are not for self-promotion and I find it mysterious that only the positive aspects of TCT's career are being represented - the negative ones are either heavily euphemised or, more commonly, erased altogether. More information is needed about the crash and the ensuing controversy.

hillbillyholiday

Quote:

Originally Posted by canopener

I find your involvement in this saga quite remarkable to say the least,you appear to be someone of a legal persuasion given the content of your posts?Are you a self appointed busy body or do you represent "wiki" in some official capacity?
You are dismissive of the tabloid press reports and remove any reference to them but are more than happy to allow the severely embellished,factually incorrect self promotion of TCT to remain.You also question the integrity of the source "controversy over flights",you seem to operate under a set of double standards Jethro.

tl;dr: Self-appointed busybody.

I'm not happy about the self-promotional aspect of this. I've said that the article should be deleted as she's not really notable.

I am interested in the underlying structural problems of wikipedia, especially those that make abusing people so easy. Without wishing to go too far off-topic, biographies are an absolute nightmare and the WMF (who run the site) don't really give a ****.
Biographies are a magnet for libelous or harmful material, and relatively unknown people are most at risk. Naturally, one should take wikipedia with a pinch of salt, but many see it as authoratative. A few editors (and I mean a few) try to stem the tide, but there are around 800,000 bios of living people.

Back to TCT... the promotional fluff and other errors aren't really hurting anyone, they should go of course, but it takes time to research and will likely lead to interminable discussions and meta-discussions -- deleting the whole article, even more so. Cutting contentious material from iffy publictaions is a blunt tool, but it's quick and easy and policy-based.

I haven't read all 70-odd pages of this thread, but mike hallam's summation seems plausible to me. Similarly, I have seen nice fluffy self-created bios decay before their subject's eyes into a litany of controversies, tittle-tattle and smears, forever enshrined on the pages of the one of the world's largest websites. Perhaps that's a fitting punishment for hubris or peacockery, maybe it would be kinder to delete the article?

Over and Out.

canopener

BatteryMaster..."She is a commercial pilot and flying instructor and also undertakes global flights in vintage aircraft" (Wiki). I know for a FACT that she once held an NZ CPL and C Cat instructor rating but that was nearly 20 years ago,they are certainly not current licenses and according to the FACTS when she wrote the Robbie off she was exercising the privileges of her PPL.A couple of dual jaunts in a "beautiful Boeing biplane" hardly constitutes "global flights in vintage aircraft".
The Wiki page should be deleted completely as it is just smoke and mirrors,perhaps Jethro the Hill Billy could see to that for us.

Stanwell

I quite agree.
That Wiki page is little more than a collection of fairy stories from the TCT publicity machine, very loosely based on a couple of facts.
The concerted efforts of a certain few anonymous individuals, to ensure that the real story remains hidden, attest to that.

Wikipedia is doing itself no favours by allowing itself to be used as yet another organ for the furtherance of this scam.
I'll be watching to see how this goes - and may have to reconsider my financial support of that otherwise worthy organisation.

hillbillyholiday

Perhaps. I wouldn't hold out much hope of seeing it deleted. For one, it will be argued by the majority "inclusionist faction" that the article passes General Notability Guidelines. If a group of unkown editors suddenly joined in the discussion to sway the vote, they'd probably be discounted as "sockpuppets", "meatpuppets", or "single-purpose accounts", and I would likely be accused of "stealth canvassing".

It's really not a very worthy organisation. Please,
donate to a more deserving charity. Wikipedia is a massive scam.