----- Original Message ---- ... I presented my opinions as to what is a benchmark, and specifically stated my qualifications.... ===================== This thread seems to be confused by the difference between the words "benchmark" and "landmark." Way back at the beginning, the original reference to a benchmark used the word correctly, viz. as a convenient standard for measurement or comparison. Various posters thereafter have gone off in the direction of trying to identify designs that had neat original ideas and significantly impacted later thought. The word for that is landmark.
Libor is a benchmark; Marbury v Madison was a landmark. To say a plane floats better or worse or similarly to an Ava is to use an Ava as a benchmark. The speaker may or may not regard the Ava as a landmark design, but it's a convenient benchmark because everybody knows how an Ava flies. What constitutes a landmark is in the eye of the beholder. Roughly speaking, it's a design like the Fletcher or the JW-DS or the Allegro that looked unusual at the time but spawned a generation of similar planes.
