FAA strange font.......

[Etiennedup]

Help please...............

Does anybody know what font was used on this Avenger with reference to the "M"

 

 

 

[stevehnz]

Hi Etienne, it won't be a font as such, they being an invention of a later age. It will likely be the interpretation of an FAA requirement for Squadron codes by whoever was doing it at the time, I'm guessing it is a Sky colour & your best option assuming you want to model it is to have a scout through various sheets having the size you want in the appropriate scale & try to find one that is a near match, or maybe get some custom masks done but thats not something I know of particualrly.

Steve.

[alancmlaird]

The term 'Fonts' actually goes back into the mists of time of Caxton and Gutenberg and hand-carved wooden letters known as 'movable type'. (There seemed to be a use of  eclesiastical terms in early printing - for instance, in Britain, the print unions had 'father of the chapel' instead of 'shop steward'!).
Sign writing goes back much further however, sign writers being a law unto themselves typographically, and I think that's what you see on this Avenger.

That's not to say that some enterprising decal producer hasn't copied this to produce a font for our own modelling obsesives.

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

Could it just be the standard US Navy codes used on a british plane. They used a specific type from the war period until the early 1950's. The navy used codes and lettering when identifying station aircraft and liason aircraft and after the war the went to a pattern identifying the service of the aircraft ie US Navy & Marines. So it could be some enterprising person at Grumman or Eastern, that decided to use the same lettering on the FAA aircraft. 

[303sqn]

There is nothing eclesiastical  about "font". It is a middle French word "fonte" meaning something that has been melted, e.g., a casting and refers to casting of metal type at a foundry.

[stevehnz]

1 hour ago, alancmlaird said:

The term 'Fonts' actually goes back into the mists of time of Caxton and Gutenberg and hand-carved wooden letters known as 'movable type'.

That's not to say that some enterprising decal producer hasn't copied this to produce a font for our own modelling obsesives.

I was thinking more of the bewildering variety of fonts available for word processing programmes. but certainly take your point that formalised lettering styles go back way further than that & possibly/probably these influenced designated letter styles for codes.

Steve.

[Seahawk]

9 hours ago, Corsairfoxfouruncle said:

So it could be some enterprising person at Grumman or Eastern, that decided to use the same lettering on the FAA aircraft. 

No, because codes would be applied.at squadron level, long after the aircraft had left the factory.  During WW2 the style of RAF codes was not standardised but the FAA was often in a different league of quirkiness and eccentricity.  4M is pretty tame compared to some.

Edited August 18, 2017 by Seahawk

[Ed Russell]

If it's really true that there are over half a million fonts in the world, then there is almost certainly an exact match for 4M somewhere. Makes a needle in a haystack relatively easy.

 

From some forum somewhere.............. (typedrawers)

Fernando Díaz Posts: 100

December 2015

Talking with Luc Devroye at AtypI he told me that he has about 500.000 fonts in his catalogue. He uploads 40 fonts every day! 

I've made some calculations about myfonts last year, I've found that more than 3.500 fonts are sold every day at MyFonts (june)... and about 7 new fonts every day (june).

[Etiennedup]

Thanks chaps.....I found an old  AeroMaster decal sheet on ebay that contains  the correct '4 M'..........

so.......... problem  solved 

Edited August 19, 2017 by Etiennedup