A word about copyright

I have written this page because I get many posts from people who are asking me, if I could give them permission to use the materials on my site in their own projects.

There are a number of things to be said about this.

First of all, I would like to repeat the statement on the home page of this site. The aim of my site is to make available free materials that help people interested in the subject of flying to learn whatever is needed to get their Private Pilots License. Free means here that you can use it for this purpose, i.e. to learn. Free does not mean free of copyright. That is why on the bottom of each page there is a copyright notice.

The second point I would like to make, is that although I have written some pages myself, I am not the original author of all the materials on my site. However, all of these materials not authored by me, are in the public domain in the sense as used by the CENDI copyright working group of the US federal government. Most of these materials are in fact published by the US government - in particular the FAA. Although the materials on my site originally published by the US government are in the public domain, I do not feel it being appropriate to assume the copyright for publishing it on my website. That is why I cannot allow others to re-publish it elsewhere (as much as I would like to) and that is also why I have excluded it on the affected pages in my copyright notice.

There is good news, however, for you folks out there who want to get on in their own projects with some of the materials you have found on my site. Chances are that the stuff you wanted to use is published by the US government and in that case you could go back to the original source and take it from there. An excellent resource for your search would be www.everyspec.com. All the FAA published handbooks can be found there.

One word of caution if you are not located in the US. The US copyright law might not apply where you are. You should first make sure that you are in compliance with your national copyright laws when using US government materials.

Well, I hope that this has answered the questions from most of you concerning copyright of materials on my site. Feel free to contact me if you still don't get anywhere. I'll be happy to help where I can.