Frequently Asked Questions
Please note: this is the general FAQ for these archives. Contribution, AviaQuiz, and other FAQs are found elsewhere


May I use an image(s) found in this collection for...?

The pictures in the collection belong to individual contributors who have graciously allowed for them to be used here. Therefore, we can not, under any circumstances, give you permission to use them for any undertaking, commercial, benevolent, educational, personal, or otherwise. Where a credit is available, I strongly encourage you to track down the original copyright holder for the image you are interested in.

I'd like to donate some images to the archive

Great! Please read the contributor FAQ

I own the copyright to picture YYY!

We apologize if this happens. The archive was built with contributions by users over the years. If an image has inapprorpiately been posted, we will attend to your concerns as promtply as possible. Please use the image suggestion mechanism (that is, select the radio button at the right of an imagelist for a particular image and then hit 'suggest' at the bottom of an imagelist) to inform us of your concern. From there, there are generally two possible actions:

Of course, we strongly hope that you'd allow the images to stay. If you decided not to use the suggestion mechanism but rather email us on such matters, please try to be specific as to which images you are referring to. "There are pictures of mine in your archive" will be difficul to act upon. "Picture P51-ITU.JPG in the P51 section" would be much more helpful.

I can't see the images

The when you click on an image, it is opened in another window.

The description for YYY is wrong!

Please see the Contributor FAQ which explains about the automated suggestion mechanism.

I get an Error 404... File Not Found or similar not found error.

Since the HTML pages of this collection are generated by a script that does not make any mistakes (we say this jokingly, but it's true), any such error you get for internal links must be due to me doing maintenance on the collection. Wait a few minutes, go back a page in your browser, and hit 'reload' to continue. Of course, links to external sites can and do go out of date periodically.

Such and such picture looks bad

Yes, some pictures are blurry, bad resolution, etc. Thre are also some real gems in there. We try to keep all but the absolutely worst pictures because modellers and researchers oftentimes can make use of even the poorer quality images. This is especially true for the less common aircraft, such as non-Wetern types.

Such and such picture is corrupt

If the picture has no usable elements in it (ie is reasonably thrashed), then please let us know and we will most likely remove it.

Why are so many descriptions missing..and what can I do to help?

Creating descriptions for the images is a very time-consuming process, especially considering that my connection to TOTAVIA tends to be slow. Please see the contributor FAQ for further information.

How is this archive organized?

In theory it is organized foremost by period (pre-WW2, WW2, or post-WW2), then by type (bomber, fighter, etc). In practice, it's organized to make things easy to find, whatever the mechanism. This means that even though the first F14 prototype flew in the late 50s if we're not mistaken, it is classified as a post-Vietnam fighter because that's where people most likely think it goes. The classifications are memory aids more than they are descriptions, so it is best not to get into a tizzy when you realize that they are not 100% accurate.

Please help me find...

We have in the past gotten requests requests asking for assistance in locating old war buddies, specific photos, photos of specific planes (as in some exact aircraft at some exact place at some exact time), aircraft parts, aircraft memorabilia, and so forth. Unfortunately, we do not have the resources to handle such requests; kindly please do not email us with such requests. Thank you for your understanding.