  Context: This is the first of a series of papers presenting VLBI observations
of the 293 Caltech-Jodrell Bank Flat-Spectrum (hereafter CJF) sources and their
analysis. Aims: One of the major goals of the CJF is to make a statistical
study of the apparent velocities of the sources. Methods: We have conducted
global VLBI and VLBA observations at 5 GHz since 1990, accumulating thirteen
separate observing campaigns. Results: We present here an overview of the
observations, give details of the data reduction and present the source
parameters resulting from a model-fitting procedure. For every source at every
observing epoch, an image is shown, built up by restoring the model-fitted
components, convolved with the clean beam, into the residual image, which was
made by Fourier transforming the visibility data after first subtracting the
model-fitted components in the uv-plane. Overplotted we show symbols to
represent the model components. Conclusions: We have produced VLBI images of
all but 5 of the 293 sources in the complete CJF sample at several epochs and
investigated the kinematics of 266 AGN.
