MILAVIA Forum
Community => Website Promotion => MILAVIA.NET => Topic started by: Webmaster on August 06, 2005, 03:50:44 AM
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There are literally tons of aviation websites. When only looking at military aviation related websites, there are thousands probably, hundreds if you consider only the quality and non-official sites out there. ::)
What makes a good military aviation website? What are the qualities that makes one that you visit frequently and is right up on the top of your favourites list?
And more important, what makes a military aviation website stand out from the rest?
How can the webmasters make their website more popular with the common visitors to these kind of websites?
If you have the answers to these questions, or better yet have ideas on how your favourite military aviation source would look, please post them here!
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Hey Niels,
Nice topic, I can go on for hours on this subject....... ::)
What makes a webite great and outstanding from the rest........well, to be honest I have no clue.
As webmaster of the Scorpion Aviation website, I tried to make the website as easy to navigate as possible.
With a easy and good overview of all the topics, and some unusual topics, that makes the website one of a kind.
With the Pilot and Photographer interviews I tried to make a special that no other aviation website on the internet has online.
Also providing a small number of unusual article's and specials.
About the photograph gallery section ??? ::), I trie to make good and high quality photographs, with a good digital camera.
But as allready said, there are allready thousends of websites online, with mostly the same reports and photographs.
So with this, you have to make some rather rarely seen and in different angle photograph shots.
To come to a point, I really don't know how to atract every time more visitors. Or to have a constant flow of high viewers.
I'n my opinion It dosn't matter what you put on your website, and the layout is not very important to everyone.
If I see somethimes other websites online, that have no overview at all, and very bad quality of photographs.......No website in special...... ;). And they have tons of viewers ervery day. ??? ??? ???
I just trie to deliver high quality photographs and reports, to whoever is interested.
And do something else like other websites by providing the Pilot and Photographer interviews.
Hope most of the people that visit my website, have enjoyed their stay, and come back somethimes.
Best Regards, Ramon. ;D
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I'n my opinion It dosn't matter what you put on your website, and the layout is not very important to everyone.
If I see somethimes other websites online, that have no overview at all, and very bad quality of photographs.......No website in special...... . And they have tons of viewers ervery day.
Yup, that's the irritating reality of being a webmaster. And sometimes to make it worse, they even go in against all the search engine optimization rules, have mistakes, broken links & images and lack content. Somehow they get this huge flow of visitors from search engine queries, for regular keywords.
Anyway, I think you are doing a great job, but the problem with your interviews is that reading them makes me feel jealous....hahaha ;D
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Well, I have somethings to say, but since I'm a not knowed "webmaster" with a not knowed "webpage" :-\ :-[ they haven't got much reliability, I think :-[
Well, to begin with, I think a good aviation website MUST have good aviation photos, a forum and maybe videos; info about airplanes is good too. But what I really like is to read interviwes (like the one of the Viggen pilot) and I find it very cool and fun :o.
As for the design of the page, I think it must be something easy and clean to navigate, not very farfetched, and easy to get used to. But I think this is not the key of succes, as most of the people that don't design websites don't usually give the importance needed to design or don't value what you've worked to achieve the present results.
In order your site to be known you need one basic and vital thing: adds all over the web
(this is how I new your website while browsing Patrick's Aviation Website.) ;)
In order to your site be frequently visited, you need to have a 'sign up' system, because, from my POV, this gives the visitor ownership, the person feels the site "a little bit of his own" and that will make the person come back, to see how is everything going, if there are new posts, if his photos have been rated.... and so on 8)
Well this is how I see it and hope to have cooperated with the cause and main objective of the topic. Hope it's useful for you all,
Thomas
PS: if you want people to come back, make it free. ;)
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Hello Thomas and other guys,
It will always be a rare subject to discuss about, can talk for hours about this.
In my opinion, and this is proven if you look around on the internet. It does not
make any difference how professional you make your website, and with the best
and highest quality photographs on it from the best and well known photographers
around. Sorry for the language, but if you see sometimes the "crap" on websites
what they call "photographs", and they have 1000 visitors on a single day. And
websites with high quality stuff on it, can be more than happy to reach 30 visitors
each day???? I do not want to look like a angry webmaster, and I also do not care
either, my website is a large hobby from me and takes a lot of my time.
But just want to say that there are no real things on a website which will improve
your website statistics. Adds like banners on other website link pages are indeed
a very good idea, but I really hate websites that are completely covered in adds all
over the place from non-aviation related topics and so on.
Regards, Ramon.
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Thomas, the point about the signup is a good one, if it means interactivity. That's key I suppose, see this forum, or looks at Amazon.com's success. Getting visitors can be achieved in a number of ways, all related: links, p2p referrals, advertising and SEO (search engine optimization). Luckily search engine are getting better and better, so they also value content and have image searching.
But that's about how people find your site, I am wondering how one site is better than the other, and what makes people return often. A forum can work, content is king, unique/rare/exclusive content/photos even better, and of course often updated. With exception of the forum, it means hard work. But even then, there are some concepts that work better than others... some things I noticed are:
Sharing (airliners.net, patrickaviation)
Video (youtube, patrick)
Large Community (fencecheck)
Large Database (scramble)
Updated News (alert5.com, air-attack.com)
Thomas, about the aircraft information. I start to wonder how big that market actually is? I have a feeling most people searching for aircraft information are just webmasters of aviation sites? The rest is just here to find some pics and specs?
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Yes, you're right, not much people look at info about planes.
About a forum, just a few of the ones that sign up stay active in the forum, without going any further, just take a look at here. I see there are 359 users sgned up. But only a handful of us take part on the forums. And that is OK, I like it, I love the forum to chat with people, discuss interesting things with them, and the foum keeps alive the whole site.
Appart from the above exposed, photos are difficult to keep updated, and to have good, apealing pictures. You see, a guy like me, I love aviation, I have my "site" :-\ of aviation, but unfortunately, I don't get to see a lot of military airplanes, only a few photos of commercial aircrafts...
And it is difficult to be known,at least for me. People that know my site, guys from here, and PAW, don't usualy visit my site, I believe, and I don't blame them at all! What happens is that again, the lack of forums makes it boring. I only added a link to a blog I made, what is what I could do. I don't know how to put a forum in my site :(
Conclussion: I think the forum keeps people active in your site, even if they are not many. I see it as a must.
Thomas
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Well, luckily my site gets more visitors than the forum's 360 members. ;)
I think I'll just have to keep adding more and better contents.
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I reckon the forum is the best part of the whole website.. i have the forum home page in favourites.. not the milavia main page..
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Hello guys,
My point exactly, in almost every reply, I read that the content and photographs
are a main part or even maybe main topic of a website to get more visitors.
I'm not trying to blame other websites, and point the finger to other websites.
But I think that with reports and the latest photographs from well known
photographers like Rick Llinares, Tyson V. Rininger and so on, and interviews
with a lot of display team pilots, I would have a killer website. But the opposite
is shown with only 60 to 70 visitors.
So it will be a very difficult and not to explain topic these visitors ;D
Regards, Ramon.
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But Ramon, how much promoting, link exchanges and SEO have you done?
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But Ramon, how much promoting, link exchanges and SEO have you done?
Hello Niels,
- Promoting is in my opinion only mouth to mouth, for example large companies like
Boeing and some airliners can find their way to my website. As they have already
asked for air-to-air photoshoots.
- Link exchange: Take a look at my link page, almost every website on there has a
link to my website.
- SEO: my website has almost on every page the word aviation, so should find his way.
Also the names from Rick, Tyson etc are found via search engines. And to make on
every page a line with words that should make it easier to find, will give me 5 visitors ??
Any more tips are more than welcome.
Regards, Ramon.
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Well, I don't want to go off topic here too much. But you can start by adding META tags in the header of your pages, like keywords and descriptions. Also, all your pages seem to have the same title SA photography, which means all search engine results are titled SA photography. They don't say anything about the content of that particular page. Google only lists 11 pages of your site. It finds only 65 websites linking to your site (it is said the list only includes sites with a PR of 4 or higher. Inbound links from popular sites are very important for search engines, it affects your page ranking, so it determine your # on the list of results for a keyword and also how frequently the indexing bots visit your site to see if anything is updated. Aviation is a very popular keyword, so imagine all the pages before yours in the search engine results, just having that word on all your pages will not help much.
Take a look at:
Google typ in: site: www.scorpionaviation.com
Google typ in: link: www.scorpionaviation.com
http://www.checkpagerank.com/
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/main?url=http://www.scorpionaviation.com
Also keep analysing your stats, to see which sites and keywords are sending you traffic.
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Hi guys, first post so hello to everyone! ;D
With regards to this topic - the most important thing is links, links, links - but preferably quality links. The higher the PR of the site you link with the higher your site will go in the rankings.
Don't be afraid to ask people for links, you'll be amazed who'll link with you! 8)
Change/update content regularly.
Like Niels and myself try and run Competitions, also add interactivity to your website - I've got loads of FREE Games, Wallpapers, Screensavers, E-cards, Email, Forums, Chat, Military Aviation Mouse Cursors (Courtesy of Paul Zimmerli at Sheppard AFB) etc, etc.
Get your visitors involved with your website.
Cheers, Roger Whitcomb - www.milairpix.com
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Welcome Roger,
Good to see you here. Sorry for my late reply. You're doing great with those competitions. I noticed your site went offline for a bit today or yesterday. Moving hosts?
Yes, links are important, but in the end, natural links (one-way-links) work better than link exchanges. Anyway, I'm anxiously watching my stats now, as somehow my Google PR dropped to 0. ::)
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There's a Google Public Relations?
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Page Rank
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Oh, sorry. Wasn't paying attention to the class. :P
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Since I am someone who recently joined Milavia.net here's my take on the topic...
I used to be a moderator for an online games tournament website and most of my "job" (if you like to call it like that) had to do with promoting online tournaments to various teams. It was a time consuming process that required me to send emails, make frequent forum posts and in general think "outside the box" in order to make sure that the website stood out from the rest. Here's some of the things that I think matter in any website regardless of content.
1. Design and layout. I strongly believe that website design and layout are very important in increasing traffic. A bad design will turn visitors away while an "ok" design will make the website look like everything else out there. However a unique yet easy to use design will create a strong first impression to first-time visitors that will entice them to explore the rest of the website and hopefully make them come back. In other words design and layout should serve as the "red carpet" that leads them to the entrance (its unique features for example).
2.Promotion. Like others mentioned before, word of mouth is important in bringing in more traffic but unless you spend endless hours sending out emails to individual users constantly then there is only this much you can achieve. The best way is to get your website's name (banner) in other (aviation-related in this case) websites. Aim high and low - try to get your banner not only in other websites that are on the same caliber as yours but also in better known websites. You will be surprised how much you can achieve this way. Even if you don't manage to get your banner in a website, try indirect methods - launch a competition and promote it as a news item on the bigger websites for example. Try to make personal connections with aviation bloggers and invite them to discussions in the forums - after all they share the same passion for aviation if they spend time writing about it.
3. Create value for visitors. Getting people to the website is half the job done. What makes the website so unique as compared to the all the other websites out there? Is it the pictures, the articles or the passionate discussions at the forums? What would make visitors to return to this website over another one? If you already know the answer then try to promote the heck out of this feature and try to capitalize on that.
Take for example www.defensenet.gr (http://www.defensenet.gr)... It's the official website of a greek defense magazine that focuses on two things - news and its forums. Obviously comparing against a well-established news organization might be overwhelming (if not impossible) but it makes my point. Focus on what the website does best and try to capitalize on that.
4. Get more people involved: Aviation is a topic that has a lot of passionate fans around the globe and at the same time running a website on your own may not be the best way. Have people who like to write about aviation run your front page and write frequent articles , or passionate moderators who will frequently launch competitions, polls or topics that will make users come back -but most importantly- participate.
5. If you can't beat them - join them: I am sure that over the years you met people who run similar aviation-related websites. One website might be good because it has great pictures, another one because it has great articles and another one because it has great bloggers. Why not talk to these guys and try to put everything under one roof (a merger if you like)? You instantly create new content for your website (the same for them) and you instantly get more people involved so you can focus on what you like the most. Even if you don't put everything under one domain this solution has a lot of advantages.
In case you were wondering when I first started looking for military aviation-related websites the first thing I came across was its reputation - the rating that it got on the top 100 aviation websites. Then when I got here, it was the forum topics that kept me going through the pages. What made me come back was the warm welcome from all forum members.
Just my two cents...
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Excellent post Elias, I think you've put together a good webmaster guide and you've touched almost about everything I am doing/considering as a webmaster.
1. I'd like to add that you also need to follow the "standards", don't be too unique when layout is concerned, be generally consistent in the navigational structure with other websites. This helps the ease of navigation, as the visitor does not have to become accustomed to your website first before he can navigate it without thinking too much. Unless of course it's unique layout is coupled so closely with your design, and that experience is the value you offer instead of content. However, generally those kind of sites don't last very long. Most important, be consistent throughout your own pages! Open door maybe, but I still see many websites that struggle with this.
2. I'd put your number 3 here, because it's so much easier to get links when you have something to offer and you don't have to ask anymore, they'll start asking you, or better yet start linking you.
3. Yes, well that's the basically the question of this topic. Any thoughts on that? Regarding your example, what makes it unique is not so much it's focus on news and forum, but that it's in greek and has a offline magazine. But I get your point on capitalize on the unique feature. But that does become a bit more difficult when you have multiple features that you feel are unique, or the uniqueness lies in the combination of non-unique features. Or maybe you're not unique then.
4. You're spot on, but it's easier said than done.
5. I've thought about this, but there are a lot of "but"s and "if"s about this. When do you know you can't beat them? Sometimes the only way of joining is by giving up your built up 'establishment' and intellectual property (I can't beat Wikipedia, so I should join them? you'll be all in tears). Plus there's the fear of losing autonomy and control. There's also some conditions for a successful collaboration, which sometimes (due to the nature of the virtual world for one) are hard to predict: interdependence, commitment, trust, communication, conflict resolution, compatible values and believes. Having said that, I've got some great partnerships with some people/websites, and that works well. There's also room for collaborative attempts at making it more of a network of sites, or collaborative projects supported by the different webmasters. But a real merger won't work I think.
Reputation? You mean that 4/5 stars, and 19th place on Avitop? Well, I'm glad you're here, but I don't how much it says about reputation...?
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1. I totally agree - no argument on that.
3. I would say that the strongest point of milavia are its forums. Their recent re-organization with the addition of the news section is an excellent idea. If you could incorporate some news on the front page I think it's going to be even better.
4. I guess I am thinking my recent experiences with the tournament website I mentioned on the previous post. On that website we managed to get a number of people to get involved on way or the other. Sometimes it worked sometimes it didn't - but in both cases we managed to gain some staff and weed out the ones who didn't fit.
5. Don't take this literally -it's just an expression. I know that Milavia is not on any kind of competition and it's not trying to "beat" any other website. All I am saying is if you have connections in the wider aviation online community why not try to do something jointly? I will give you an example... On the tournament website I mentioned, we wanted to add online radio with live coverage to some gaming events. We came across another gaming enthusiast with some experience, who initially started making podcasts for our website (we basically offered him free hosting space for his podcasts). Then after a while the podcasts developed to online radio program that were run during the gaming events. We always maintained control of the whole process (since it was our website) while at the same time, our "radio staff" did what they enjoyed most.
Another example... We had an excellent relationship with a modding website. Their major problem was that their creations (mod maps) didn't get enough attention from the gaming community. Our problem on the other hand was that our tournaments were (initially) just like any other tournament and we wanted to do something to distinguish ourselves from the rest. So we contacted the creators of the website and after some extensive discussions we convinced them to create a never seen/never played before map that was going to be played exclusively on our tournaments. I can't tell you how much it helped our website.
As far as milavia's reputation is concerned, I am not sure if reputation is the right word... Maybe popularity is more appropriate. All I am saying is that I was looking for a military aviation website with forums and I found just that. The aviation top 100 websites gives milavia a good rating plus if you google "military aviation" the first thing that comes up is Milavia. :)
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I´m just so fu*king frustrated right now.
I´ve been checking out some military aviation related blogs written in Portuguese and i´m shocked with what i found.
I found dozens of sites poorly written, with lots of spelling mistakes, lots of expressions in English and non-sense sentences ( which indicates someone just took an English phrase from some English website, used google to translate and posted it without even making some editing), completely disorganized blogs with a very unprofessional attitude into to it and literally TONS of technical mistakes about the planes and a good tea-spoon of speculation, and dozens of links who don´t work.
While that, if you take a look to my blog:
-It is as organized as it can get, its nearly impossible to get more organization using Blogger
-I take great care with everything on it, every weekend i check ALL the links of my blog to see if they are working fine
-Once a month, i check ALL THE POST i made so far to see if there is any broken link or image who might have disappeared.
-I use a professional tone and when i post i review everything at least twice to ensure there is no typos, grammatical mistakes, etc.
-When i´m going to write an article, i spend at least one month researching information, deciding how i wanna write the article and selecting the material to make sure they are as accurate as they can possible be, and at least another month writing the article and reviewing it over and over again looking for mistakes
-Finally, while these other sites use sources who came from Gods know where, i use mainly books and websites whose contents are of good quality (Milavia for example is a great source because i know it is made by someone who is as careful as i am).
-Almost none of the other blog have a way to contact the webmasters, while that my blog as its own link for anyone with questions, doubts, critics, etc
So, whats my point?
The other blog who are cheap, poorly written, with wrong information and a complete mess get Tons of visitors a day.
Mine just gets 40 a day on average.
So, this makes me wonder, whats the point of dedicating so much time to make sure that my blog is top notch when in the end i just get a miserable amount of visitors while the other cheap blog get hundreds?
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Because Suk you get pleasure out of your work same as I do writing stuff on here. I do it for myself. If I did it for others I'd have stopped long ago as I rarely get any response. People are only interested in controversy not nice posts. That's why this week when we all had that argument about your love of Russian built aircraft and everyone wanted to shoot at me, we got the most activity I have seen on the forum.
If you want visitors to your site start saying radical stuff. They'll come in droves.
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If you want visitors to your site start saying radical stuff. They'll come in droves.
I guess people prefer trash talking to quality.
But i´m not gonna start bullshiting just to get people on my blog, i´m gonna keep my standarts.
In fact, right now i´m writing a major article about the Su-33 which also involves some story about Russian Navy carriers and it is giving me a lot of work, just hope people recognize all my efforts and time spent doing it.
P.S- Once again thank you Webmaster, Milavia is my main "internet" source again together with sukhoi.org.
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Well, you should start by trying to figure out why you don't get more visitors first. Then you should look at their blogs. I don't mean just the blogs themselves, but how do they score on google, and also search them on google to see where they get their visitors from.
Send me a PM with the URLs and I'll have a look too.
Where they get it from? Probably Wikipedia? Been kinda messy there on the Sukhoi front, it's improving though, and I could also pack my bags if I start thinking what's the point.
It's more important that you are happy with it. Most visitors take it all for granted anyway.
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Well, you should start by trying to figure out why you don't get more visitors first. Then you should look at their blogs. I don't mean just the blogs themselves, but how do they score on google, and also search them on google to see where they get their visitors from.
Send me a PM with the URLs and I'll have a look too.
Where they get it from? Probably Wikipedia? Been kinda messy there on the Sukhoi front, it's improving though, and I could also pack my bags if I start thinking what's the point.
It's more important that you are happy with it. Most visitors take it all for granted anyway.
Thats another curious thing, here in Portugal, at least, when you type anything about Sukhoi or something like that, my blog appears first, bWell, you should start by trying to figure out why you don't get more visitors first. Then you should look at their blogs. I don't mean just the blogs themselves, but how do they score on google, and also search them on google to see where they get their visitors from.
If i type Su-35BM on the option "Web" this one appears in second ( http://equipamentos-militares-aereo.blogspot.com/2007/06/su-35bm-nova-gerao-do-super-flanker.html ), while that mine appears in 5th.
If you read my article and his article, you´ll notice that mine is just as complete as his, but mine is more organized, has much better images, and does not contain mistakes like saying the ceiling of the BM is 18.800m when its brochures from KnAAPO states 18.000m.
Also, he states it supecruises at Mach 1.05 and thats it.
If you take a look at mine, i state that it supercruises at Mach 1.6 but i made it this way( ????1.6????), the question mark is used to indicate thats just speculation, not something confirmed, in other words, when there something that is just speculation, i clearly indicate it as such.
Another thing, he states the sustained turning rate of the BM is 60º per second when no such information has ever been released.
But anyway, i´m not gonna stop, its better to have 40 visitors who like quality than 200 visitor who want bullshit and speculation.
P.S-Yeah, wikipedia is most likely their source.
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His blog is older, something which counts for ranking. He has got more aircraft, so he also get visitors on those.
How do you know he is getting more visitors than you? If it's the total count I wouldn't be surprised. Or do you know the number for just the Su-35 page.
The things you mentioned are hardly mistakes, except for the turn rate, that's a mistake by you. He has 32 degrees/s on there... I don't see 60?? The only 60degree/s I found is for the movement of the TVC nozzle.
And calling it Su-35BM is wrong, lol.
But about the ceiling spec, you got it from a sales brochure published before it was flying. Those are always inaccurate, if it says 18000, then it's around or more than that as that was probably the design specification. 18800 is the same as some sources report for the Su-27/37. You have to take these early specs with a big grain of salt. Depending on how the 117S performs, we still have to see what the actual ceiling that will be put into the flight manual, and then it can still be higher in reality or lower due to operational limits, just like speed, etc.
Here's (one of) his source(s) I think: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/su-35bm-specs.htm
Regarding supercruise, meaningless number, depends on too much to worry about it being accurate. But the new engines have like 1000 kgf more dry thrust, so 2000 kgf roughly, that's like 5000 lbf more. With the additional weight considered... that isn't going to take it from subsonic cruise speed (Su-27) to a supercruiser. Sure, 1.05 may be possible, why not, other planes do. But is it really a capability? I guess not otherwise KnAAPO/Sukhoi would have jumped on the "supercruise" band wagon too.
Mach 1.6 seems impossible, the design hasn't changed that much, so it has to come from the engines then. That's still pretty much the same too, only uprated and FADEC and things to improve MTBO/MTBF. But I don't know much about aerodynamics and engine stuff. Just seems wrong to me that all it takes to double cruise speed and beyond the sound barrier takes only a new FCS and updated engine.
Don't get hung up on specs, they are just indicators.
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"Capacidade de curva sustentada de até 60 graus"
Means sustained turning rate.
Also, about the ceiling stuff, i do not disagree with you, but do you consider correct to post something based on older models when the company already has a brochure with that figure?
About the supercruise, my point is he states 1.05 and thats it, no indication whatsoever about that figure beeing just estimated or not. To me thats wrong.
If you take a look at mine you read ?1.6?, i say the number but clearly indicate it has just speculation, nothing confirmed. And as far as i remember, i think i took that information from Air Power Australia.
And yet another thing, you can´t read Portuguese, so you can´t exactly fully compare my article to his, but trust me, mine is better.
But there many other blogs with similar situations, that one was just an example.
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And yes, calling it 35BM is not fully correct but its the best way to tell apart the old model from this one, we already discussed this remember ;) ;)
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Not trying to criticize your article, I was just reacting to your comments here.
"Capacidade de curva sustentada de até 60 graus"
Ok, so his text contradicts his specs.
Also, about the ceiling stuff, i do not disagree with you, but do you consider correct to post something based on older models when the company already has a brochure with that figure?
Obviously, he didn't use the brochure for his specs, but either globalsecurity or another source using those specs.
About the supercruise, my point is he states 1.05 and thats it, no indication whatsoever about that figure beeing just estimated or not. To me thats wrong.
Copied from source, who got it from god knows where. Wrong, well it's just bad practice. The majority of my specs come from Jane's, unless I really researched them. Now probably much of them is estimated without a note that they are. What am I going to do? I don't know which are estimated, if I say they are all estimated I am dishonouring my source, if I start digging deeper I only arrive at less reliable sources, unless I really start to make an effort and trace it all back to the original source by contacting publishers, authors, etc. I just want to have some specs to put on my blog/site...
The problem is that in the aviation press, even the professional publications, authors almost never declare their sources for information, and the marketing teams of manufacturers don't care about all the "if's and but's" attached to a certain number either. It's not a science, and even in science they get in wrong because "this publication said so, so I bet they did their research", but that's another story.
You are a big fan of Yefim Gordon right, you'd be shocked if someone would point out how much errors he has in his publications. And yet he became the "authority" on Russian military aviation.
Now, all of this considered, how much can you really expect from some blog?
All I want to say is that it is great you take it so serious and do your research. But don't get frustrated when others don't, believe me, been there, done that. It's not worth it, errors and inaccuracies are part of the field.
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Ok, ok, i´ll calm myself down.
About experts being wrong sometimes, that doesn´t surprise me, it happens in all fields, not just in aviation.
And about plane specs, sure they are not 100% accurate, after all many times most of those specs are secret and are not meant to be disclosed.
By the way, since you referred Gordon, let me ask you something, just curious, which one do you like the most, Gordon or Fomin?
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I can't really answer that question, I've got no preference, they aren't really comparable authors. Gordon puts out books like there's no tomorrow, which makes me wonder is he an author or an editor putting pieces together. Regardless, amazing line up and a wealth of information in a well presented form. I only know Fomin's work in the form of the Su-27 book and his articles in AFM, he seems to me the one who can be the most informed. But I can't say I have a preference.
Unless you mean Gordon's Su-27 book vs Fomin's Su-27 book. Then I prefer the book by Fomin, even though it's older, incomplete, less readable, and suffers from poor translation. If you look at the acknowledgements in both books, it's clear who's done the most research. It's also much more detailed, although a lot is left unexplained. Fomin's book also has forewords by Sukhoi and KnAAPO. Gordon also had talks with Sukhoi it seems, but he states "This book relies on unclassified sources (books and magazines published in Russia, the UK and the USA)." He mostly updated his own work. But don't get me wrong, I don't think it's worse. But now Fomin included a literature list instead of such a vague statement. That helps my credibility towards the book. But in the end, I can't completely judge that. My conclusion is that Gordon's publication is the better book, it's close to being the ultimate reference, but Fomin's book is the more valuable source.