Guidance needed on aircraft serial numbers

Always thought it was a manufactureres perogative in which way you viewed port/starboard.Viewing aft or viewing forward.

Port and starboard are just different names for left and right.

Nope. Stand on a ship (or plane, or elephant), facing aft. Your right hand is now also your port hand.

This is why the FAA did what they did. In order to avoid a scenario whereby, for example, an aft-facing aircraft had a wing that was simultaneously port and starboard they went with this ‘hand’ convention – so that in just the same way as a person facing aft, the right wing would also be the port wing without confusion.

Aeronut simply reversed this convention (in the sense of carried/carrier, not boat/aircraft) in his fascinating example, also for greater clarity.

My point was that should port and starboard have remained common currency there would be no reason for 41bronco to resort to compass points as these words were coined to deal with just such a requirement to universally describe positioning regardless of angle of viewing.

I remember having fun writing the report for a boat airdrop system.
The boat was extracted bow first off the ramp of the Hercules but because the aircraft was pointed one way and the boat the other for the sake of my sanity and to help other readers I kept the nautical port, starboard, fore and aft terms for the boat and used front, rear, left and right for the aircraft.
The job could still be a little confusing as I often had to remind myself that left was on my right, right on my left, looking forwards was back and the load rushing away from me out of the aircraft was decelerating and not accelerating as it appeared to be doing.:confused:

Port and starboard are just different names for left and right. Starboard refers to the side the ship/boat that the steering board or oar was on , the right facing forward. So as not to damage it the ship/boat will always have the left side againt the dock and so that was called the port side.

The FAA use right and left because port and starboard always reference the ship, ie., the aircraft carrier.

This is why Port and Starboard are (or perhaps were) used. Left facing one way is right facing the other, but port is always left when facing in the primary direction of travel (forward) and starboard right, whether boat, plane or elephant. The disappearance of the terms provides an example of apparent simplification actually making language harder to use.

Good question – in my case I used compass points for purposes of clarity because I’m not up to speed with how to describe things when it comes to different angles of viewing an aircraft.

I’m curious….. Why is there a reluctance to use port and starboard terminology? It’s not just here, it seems as though the usage of the terms is going out of fashion.

Hi Pagen01,

Thanks for your information – most helpful in solving a puzzel.

If you look and the underside with the nose in the “north” position how would the letters/numbers be orientated? Would the serial numbers be orientated the opposite way on both wings? – meaning would those on the “west” wing be right way up and the ones on the “east” wing be upside down or visa-versa?

correct on all points there, but never vice versa.

British military serials were presented on the undersides of both wings (one written opposite way to the other) and on each side of the fusalage, and most wartime era aircraft presented their serials in this conventional manner.
There were guides set out for serial presentation, with different sized letters (and roundels) etc used, I think it was something to do with the class of aircraft and percentage of space it took up on the fusalage.
It gets more complicated than that as there are peacetime and wartime guides, for instance compare the size of the serials on Lancaster compared to that of the Lincoln, but then Shackletons of the same era had Lancaster sized presentation!
Generally speaking, the serials appearing on the tail seems to be pre WWII, with the serials then moving to the fusalage.
As swept-wings and other less conventional fusalage shapes came into use the serials were sometimes presented in different places, ie the Javelin has the fusalage serials presented ahead of the wing, Vulcans had them on the tail.

There are exceptions to the rules of course, example Tornado F.3s have the serial on the tail, while the GRs have them on the fusalage, early GR.s had their ‘underwing’ serials applied under the tailplane.