This is my first post. Please pull up a chair, in true Matt Young (my real name) style, this will probably be long.

From my profile, it is aparent that I'm just a guy that likes the topic of military aircraft. I'm co-author of the website CombatAircraft.com, my responsibility is "Web Developer", not "Aircraft Know-It-All". So forgive me if the following series of statements and questions seem...rudimentary if not stupid.

CombatAircraft.com is woefully out of date. Our big initiative is to ligitimize the site by primarily hiring out technical illustrators to redesign all of the artwork, provide 3-D moving models, and expand our catalog of aircraft. An exersise that has been quoted to us at just around $4.5MM, but we're going to try and do for less.

So what positively the f--- does this have to do with maintenance? Here's the stupid part.

We are going to begin to devise a plan to consider the possibility that we may develop a new website that will be a searchable catalog for military and non-military aircraft parts. This site will bring together suppliers of the parts into one page. Like we all have profile pages on 'TrueAviation.com', suppliers will have profile pages on this website that will in essense provide a home page for small companies without websites, or will act as jump pages to thir own main page. The content will be exposed to Google in an optimized manner in an attempt to increase exposure to their products.

It will also give people who purchase aircraft parts a central repository to search different suppliers for the same part, to compare prices (if provided) and allow them to get to the suppliers' home pages or contact their sales associates.

So here are my dumb questions:

Is the web just chocked full of search sites like this?
Would this be helpful?
Is the internet a primary source for searching for aircraft parts?

Most importantly, what kind of search terms would be required? What do I need the suppliers to provide to ME in order to have a useful batch of data? I'm most interested in the part-level detail? I assume the supplier part number, the manufacturer part number, a name, description and some sort of general category. What about specifications on the part? Or is the part number sufficient?

I'm also interested in knowing more from the purchasing person's perspective? In small companies, are these people usually the mechanics themselves? Do larger companies have purchasing agents or departments? I'd like to hear stories.

The goal is to create this site and let it be the beginnings of a cash engine that will fund the updating of CombatAircraft.com and give us a product. And an advertising platform. And world domination.

So how's that for a topic? Let me have it! Or ignore me. Or whatnot.

Matt

Jeesh 4.5 mil to do that. Wow!!!! I think you have some good ideas but I probably dont have as good insight and some others on the site probably have since i have never bought any aircraft equiptment.

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There's been a little problem in the cockpit, and I was . . .The cockpit--what is it?.....It's the little room in the front of the plane where the pilots sit, but that's not important right now.

The site was actually developed with the military in mind initially. It was only after a little bit of footwork and some listings in Yahoo and Google that the site started getting some serious exposure. Most of the visitors are enthusiasts, but we always develope the site around the military training angle. That's who we'd ultimately like to deliver a product to. Even though it sounds like a lot of cash for those drawings, it wound up being about $9500 per aircraft to fully license a 3D rendering, an animated flash file, and 3-View line and color drawings. So the collateral intellectual property from the project would have been awesome. Unfortunately, things didn't work out in our favor and we really only have one potential provider of the fundage necessary...they reside in a five sided building behind a very large wall of government red tape. Even though one of our senators sits on the armed services committee, I don't think we could even get the idea through to him. Not even sure how to broach the subject with him: "Yeah, listen Senator. I'm some dude and, yeah, couldja give us four million bucks? Thanks!"