| Five years old, and looking towards the future |
In September it will be five years
ago that AirHistory.net came online for everybody to see. We are happy
to say that we think this project is a success and fulfulling a very
useful role in the field of aviation history, in particular through
preserving older and newer aviation photos and interlinking them in a
unique database and pictorial framework. The website's growth does come
with growing expenses. We will soon move to a more professional and
thus more expensive webserver, for example, to ensure the site's
reliability and speed, even with almost 600,000 photos now online.
Currently,
financial support is from the wallets of AirHistory's initiators,
and this will not end tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. The site is
not in trouble and we are confident that it will stay out of trouble. We
are just looking at the long-term funding. We do not plan to introduce a
paid membership scheme. We do plan to ask for voluntary financial
donations from our users – uploaders as well as viewers. We
may be putting a donation button on the website before too long.
Presently,
we are working towards transforming the website into a non-profit
foundation. This change is aimed at ensuring that donated funds are
allocated responsibly, reflecting the same careful financial management
that the initiators have maintained so far. Any excess funds will be
kept within the foundation, serving as a reserve for future
developments.
Most importantly, we do not plan to carry
commercial ads! But we would consider sponsorships with the right kind
of partners. Currently we already receive sponsored support from our
hosting provider, for which we are very grateful. Perhaps some users are
involved with an aviation-related company or organisation that might
want to be a friend of AirHistory.net. Please drop us a message if you
see any openings. |
|
|
|
|
|
Whether you're into jet fighters
or old propliners, as a serious aviation geek you can't avoid the serial
number system used by the United States Air Force and US Army air arms
to administer their aircraft. Their fiscal year-based system has been in
use for a century now. Unfortunately, this system has its quirks
– in particular, the use of the so-called tail numbers that are
different from the actual serial. Another issue is the number of digits
that the actual serials and the tail numbers are required to have, which
has changed over the years. For example, the correct serial of the
above fiscal year 1951 C-124 Globemaster is 51-142, but the correct tail
number is 10142 – with the 'decade digit' left out, but, on the
other hand, a 'padding zero' thrown in. The latter leads many people and
resources to believe that the full serial is "51-0142". And while
AirHistory supports searching for tail number 10142, many people would
enter "51-0142" and not find this photo – until now! We were able
to make some further improvements to the search algorithms and indexes,
and searches for US fiscal year serials will now tolerate a wrong number
of 'padding zeros'. The photos will be found regardless.
In
addition to these improvements for the searches, we will, for historical
correctness, also be correcting entries that have been uploaded with a
wrong number of zeros in the serial. The correct minimum number of
digits behind the fiscal year in the full serial is one digit from FY
1922, three digits from 1947 and four digits from 1958. We kindly ask
our uploaders to use the correct format, but mistakes will be
auto-corrected by the system within one minute from upload.
For far more details on the USAF and US Army serial system, we refer to a new article in the AirHistory Magazine, titled USAF and US Army serial and tail numbers: the ins and outs. Nobody seems able to explain why the
painted tail numbers are (still) different from the full serials in the
first place, but the article does provide a comprehensive review of the
FY-based serial system throughout the years, including the '0' tail
number prefix for aircraft older than ten years - please note, once and
for all, that this was a 0 (zero) and not an O (Oh)!
|
|
|
|
|
|
| US Army |
The article also covers the use of
the same serial system by the aviation component of he US Army. A
belief has taken hold that the correct serial format for US Army
aircraft is now a seven-digit '85-06789' format, replacing the old
85-6789 format, and that this applies to all US Army aircraft since the
1960s (or even since 1947 according to some). As explained and evidenced
in the article, we consider this belief to be mistaken. Based on that
article and other information available to us at this moment we can only
conclude that the system is fundamentally unchanged, although there are
of lot of abberations in how it is used in practice.
This means
that AirHistory.net will use the same rules for USAF and US Army
serials, and US Army photos that are uploaded with extra zeros in the
serial will be auto-corrected by the system. |
|
|
|
|
|
| Join our support team, meet the world! |
|
|
|
|
|
| We
have one or two openings in our crew for the
User Support work. The job typically takes only a few minutes
of time per day, but is important in making new users feel welcome to
AirHistory.net. Here’s the job description: |
|
|
|
|
|
- Handling applications to join AirHistory.net.
- Advising the AirHistory crew if a new member has joined.
- Provide assistance to people who have questions or problems with the uploading process.
- Helping people who cannot log in or are having similar minor problems.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Obviously
to be the right person for this job you need some social skills. You
enjoy talking to people and helping them out – usually through e-mail
that is. You know a thing or two about aviation photography and
uploading photos to the internet. You do not need to be a seasoned
photographer and you don’t need to know all the ins and outs of the
AirHistory.net database – of course, the screeners and editors will be
there to back you up.
You should be able to communicate in English well, and if you can in other languages too that’s a plus. As
said, the work does not take much time, typically no more than a few
minutes on most days. There will usually be only a few emails or less
each week, but it’s important that you are able to check for incoming
support emails at least twice a day, for quicker response times.
As
you’ll understand this is a volunteer job and we don’t have too much to
offer in terms of reward, except that you’ll get to know
AirHistory.net’s users and crew, and the gratitude of the
people you’ll be helping out. Applications or questions can be sent
to joincrew@airhistory.net. We look forward to hearing from you! |
|
|
|
|
|
Don't you think often when you see
a great old aircraft photo: 'Oh, I wish I could have been
there!' To make up for the human inability to transcend time and
space, many aircraft spotters collect photos and slides of aircraft
made by other people, and enjoy browsing through their collection of
sometimes very rare shots.
But isn't it even more fun to show
such a personal collection to other people? At AirHistory, we aim to
cover aviation history photographically in all its forms and guises.
Thus we very much welcome collection photos such as the Japanese pictues
taken by Akira Watanabe, and included in Bob Thomas's personal
collection.
If you would like to start uploading the photos
you've collected from others, we ask that you contact us to set up a
separate 'Collection' account for any photographs not taken by yourself.
Once this is established, you'll see that it's very easy during the
upload process to toggle between your own photographer's account and
your Collection account. No separate logins are required.
Of
course, you must have the right or permission to publish a photo. This
could mean that the photo’s copyright has expired, that it comes from
the public domain, that it is a family heirloom, or that the original
photographer has waived copyright. Enthusiasts often waive copyright
when selling or exchanging photos, on the condition that their name
is properly credited. So our requirement to you as an uploader is
that you must always credit the original photographer, if his or her
identiy is known, in the photo comment field. Obviously, uploading
photos taken by others and claiming them as your own is not allowed.
Also we do not accept scans of images from books or magazines. Should
there be any dispute and a person comes forward with evidence a photo is
his or hers, the photo will be removed or the photo credit changed. We
will notify you in any such cases.
You may not know where and
when exactly your collection photos were taken. As with older shots of
your own, please do your best to supply a sensible date range. You may
list the location as unknown, perhaps speculating about the location in
the photo comment. Editors and users may even recognise the location or
be able to add other information. As to quality, as always, we
prefer high-quality, high-resolution images of course, but photos
of imperfect quality can be very welcome in our database if they are
rare or old, as our website philosophy is that the subject of the photo
is more important than the quality.
Quite a few of our
contributors are already uploading photos from their collections and
these include some really unique and spectacular shots. If you have
some aviation treasures hidden away on your shelves, we very much hope
that you would like to share them with us and with the world. |
|
|
|
|
|
| Local scripts and characters |
|
|
|
|
|
| At some places in our photo database you may have noticed characters not normally used in our lingua franca – English. This includes not only special accents and diacritical marks used on Latin letters, but even non-Western alphabets. |
|
|
|
|
|
| Registrations and serials |
| Rendering these characters has a dual purpose. It may help users to read texts and numbers seen in photos. Aircraft registrations and serials are of course important in our hobby and our support of local characters helps to identify serials painted in local Arabic numerals on an Egyptian military aircraft for example, or the cyrillic character Л (L) incorporated in the registration of the above Tu-104 (note: by ICAO definition the CCCP prefix is officially Roman script). But it's not just practical. We also want to emphasize our intention of being a truly international project, respectful of different languages and cultures and supportered by photograpers, collectors, and staff members from around the world. |
|
|
|
|
|
| Local operator names |
| As you know, aircraft operators are basically listed in the Operator/Titles field. Note that diacritical marks can be used in this field, as seen in the names of operators such as LAM - Linhas Aéreas de Moçambique, Südflug, and Flugleiðir - Icelandair. Of course our editors are there to help with this and as an uploader you generally won't have to struggle with characters you're unfamiliar with. |
|
|
|
|
|
| For operator names in their local script, we have the Local Operator Name field, which will be automatically filled in many cases. It appears when you click on a photo to view it in large size. For example, the local operator name of Air China displays as 中国国际航空公司. For Sun d’Or International Airlines it is סאן דור in Hebrew script, and Emirates shows as الإمارات in Arabic. |
|
|
|
|
|
|  |
We've also begun to render aircraft names in local scripts. The Aircraft Name database field can cope with both special characters and non-Western scripts, for cases such as TC-JNO, a Turkish Airlines A330 named Boğaziçi, or the Qatar Airways Boeing 777-300 in retro livery, A7-BAC, which is named “فريحه. Many aircraft carry a name in local spelling on one side and the English translation of that name on the other side. For these aircraft, we list the name on the left-hand (captain's) side first, followed by the name on the right-hand side with a slash ( / ) between the two. Thus, the name of Air India’s Boeing 747-400 VT-EVJ is listed as फ़तेहपुर सीकरी / Fatehpur Sikri with the local script first, because of its placement on the left-hand side of the aircraft.
Our editors are doing their best to add renderings in local scripts, but for languages one hasn't mastered it is a laborious processs. You can help by sending corrections if you notice any errors in the local scripts on our site, and also by bringing to our attention any reputable websites that list aircraft names in local languages. |
|
|
|
|
| Photographic evidence versus artifical intelligence |
|
|
|
|
|
Some of the images you see on
AirHistory are pretty spectacular, sometimes to the point of appearing
unreal. Others have imperfections or were shot in less-than-ideal
conditions. But they are all genuine photographs and you can rely on
them as historical evidence of particular airframes or registrations.
We
recently changed our official website title from 'AirHistory.net The
Aviation History Image Archive” to ''AirHistory.net – The Aviation
History Photo Archive” in response tot the rapid spread of artificial
intelligence (AI) and generative images online. AirHistory is, above
all, dedicated to aviation history as it has actually occurred. For this
reason, we only accept real photos. There is just no case here for
AI-generated or AI-manipulated images.
We frown upon any photo
manipulation that goes beyond the darkroom techniques. This means we
allow only minor adjustments to brightness, contrast, and color, as well
as cropping, rotation, and the removal of dust spots and scratches.
Please resist any temptation to use (AI) editing tools that distort or
create a false reality, such as colourisation, or generative fill to
insert or remove objects. |
|
|
|
|
|
| The Story of Photo... 365040 |
|
|
|
|
|
| L-049 Constellation N2737A, a
former BOAC aircraft, is seen here grounded at Prestwick following
declaration of an in-flight emergency en route from Gander. This Connie
crashed as Imperial Airlines Flight 201/8 in Virginia four months later
on 8 November 1961. With all 74 US Army recruits and three of the five
crew on board killed, this was then the second worst US aviation
accident involving a single plane. The crew committed multiple errors in
handling a fuel pressure problem. The Civil Aeronautics Board
investigation found that Imperial Airlines' management and maintenance
left a lot to be desired, and the news photographer who pulled the below
shot of the airline's facilities at MIA must have felt like hitting the
jackpot! |
|
|
|
|
|
| Time news mazine found
that non-scheduled carriers such as Imperial were 'more than 30 times as
dangerous' in deaths per passenger mile compared to the scheduled
airlines. A root cause was the outsourcing of personnel transport
by the US armed forces to the lowest bidders. As a result of the crash,
the 'supplemental' airline sector was scrutinized and some 20 'nonskeds'
lost their licence. However, as WIkipedia puts it, 'within five years
the industry was booming again, partly due to the troop and equipment
carrying needs of the Vietnam War.' |
|
|
|
|
|
Photos by Alastair T. Gardiner, Peter de Jong, McIntyre Collection (via Tim Martin), Streep, John Visanich,
Akira Watanabe from Bob Thomas Collection, and from AirHistory.net Photo Archive |
|
|
|
|
|
|
