Maik Voigt Alaska Airlines repaints

[David R]

Ok, here's the situation with Maik Voigt's Alaska repaints.

I did contact avsim this morning (11:58am) about them, explained the situation about the paintkit Maik used being changed and how that was against my wishes as spelled out in the readme that came with the paintkit.

For those of you who haven't read the readme, this is what it says:

USE OF THIS PAINTKIT

You may use this paintkit to create repaints only for the particular aircraft model it was designed for.

You may not use this paintkit to create a new paintkit, for this or any other model, or to use elements provided with this paintkit on different models other than the one that it was designed for. (This includes different aircraft in the same series) Note that this is in no way a restrciction on your making needed changes for a particular repaint, such as different door/engine markings, weathering etc.

If you find this paintkit to be poorly made and inaccurate, we encourage you to make your own superior paintkit. However, you do not have permission to use any elements from this paintkit in the creation of your new paintkit.

To help you out in creating your own paintkit, we have provided a wireframe bmp with which you can use as a base for laying out your own paintkit. You will find this wireframe bmp in the "BuildYourOwnPaintkit" folder.

Any uploaded repaint that we find has violated any of these rules we will have removed at our discretion.

And this is also from the same email message I sent to avsim this morning:

Originally Posted by David R

What now?
Well, I don't want avsim to just quickly and arbitraily remove Maik's Alaska repaints just because I have a dispute with his using his modified version of my paintkit. I'd like Avsim to actually read and understand the situation as I have described here, and if Avsim thinks Maik's files need to be removed because he violated a usage restriction that I included in the Readme, then go ahead and remove them.

A few hours later (2:48pm) avsim replied with this:

In the meantime it's up to you if you want the files removed. You seem to have a valid complaint and We at Avsim do not mediate these things so the choice is yours. Perhaps you can email Mark and discuss it and prevent removal of files. Let us know what you want done.

I replied (3:09 pm) that I'd emailed Maik once before about his original Alaska Airlines repaints back in October, and that he'd never replied, but that I'd give it another try.

So at 3:55pm I emailed the following to Maik using the contact email address included with his repaints:

Hello Maik,

I'm sure by now you know that I have contacted avsim about your 6 Alaska Airlines repaints uploaded today.

I did not ask them to remove your repaints, I explained the situation to them as best I could, that you had made a "new" paintkit using my released paintkit for it's basis, and that I specifically mentioned that in the Readme. And then asked them (avsim) to arrive at a conclusion about whether or not the repaints should be removed.

Avsim has since replied to me that they think I have a valid claim for having your repaints removed, and they will do so if I ask them to.

But, I'm not going to ask them to remove them.

I do have a few questions I'd really like answered though. Why are you replacing the windows? Did you make the new ones and you like them better? Did someone just give you the news ones and tell you they were better? And the window shades? What's going on with those, surely you realize from looking at countless photos of 737's that Boeing's windows shades are not white. Airbus window shades are white, but Boeings are a warm gray. So, why are you changing them?

You're not a bad painter, but some of your choices make no sense to me, since they're obviously not being done to make your repaints more accurate.

If you want to pass on to your friends in the evai forum that I'm not having your repaints removed, please do so, and you have my permission to quote this entire message.

Looking forward to your reply,
David Rawlins

I have not received a reply from Maik to this so far.

I went out for several hours, and when I returned I had a message from avsim (7:43pm) telling me that they had removed the files. I hadn't asked them to, but they removed them anyway.

This was a mistake, they should not have been removed, that was not my intention.

So, I humbly apologize to Maik Voigt for inadvertantly having his Alaska Airlines repaints removed, and I encourage him to re-upload them as soon as possible if he wishes to do so.

David Rawlins