Question for repainters: Imperial Airways font ?
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Thread: Question for repainters: Imperial Airways font ?

  1. #1

    Question for repainters: Imperial Airways font ?

    Hello all,

    As the title says, does anyone know what font was used by Imperial Airways on their C-Class Empire boats ? I haven't been able to find any that match up with the existing paints. Since my forehead hurts from banging it into my desk repeatedly, I figured it's time to ask for help

  2. #2
    SOH-CM-2021 BendyFlyer's Avatar
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    Bunkeister - I suffered the same problem when I did some repaints for the JBK S23 (which was part of a rebuild etc for FSX). What were the colours etc of these aeroplanes (inside and out) So in case you do not already know the lettering was a dark blue not black. The overall colour was an anodised aluminium paint coating that looked like a white-silver so they had a matt silver looking finish. I even closely scrutinised the maintenance manual for the S23 to see if it would tell you - and it does not alas. I have come to the conclusion over the years that aircraft painters (the real ones who did the painting etc) belonged to a secret society and never revealed their fonts or styles but clearly they would have been referring to or using font or style books from the period! There are some strange and non standard type faces and fonts used on aeroplanes!

    Now the lettering had to be a standard size which followed the 1930 Convention of the Regulation of Aerial Navigation - ALL CAPITALS 2.13 metres (high) for the wing and 1.067 metres for the hull lettering. The aircraft name was 305 mm high and the airline name (Imperial Airways London or Qantas Empire Airways) was 250mm. That sizing convention was followed by Shorts. You can work out how big that is relative to the aircraft from the chord of the wing and the size or depth of the hull or the hull dimensions.

    Yes but what was the font? Answer is that it was a font peculiar to and done by Short Brothers the details of which are now lost. Even Brian Cassidy who had access to a lot of material about the C Class aeroplanes and people who worked on them could not find a definitive answer. I quote here Brian Cassidy in Flying Empires:

    " The style of the lettering was unique both to Short Bros. - and the Empire 'boats. A connoisseur oflettering would have had considerable difficulties with the heightened initial capitals, the somewhat erratic spacing of the letters and the variation of stroke thicknesses in the individual letters."

    Basically I used Calabria as a font, capitalised it was about the closest I could get. It may be possible to do a copy and paste of the lettering from an original photograph using a paint program and manipulate the letters individually then paste them onto your texture. I thought about doing that in the end decided to fudge it using Calabria Font!. Thats all I can help you with.

  3. #3
    Wow, thanks so very much, that's a heck of a lot more info than I would've expected! My copy of "Flying Empires" shipped yesterday, but isn't due to arrive until December... guess it's coming via banana boat!
    I was a bit confused by the slightly taller 1st letters in the names - thought I was seeing things. Your note has cleared that up nicely.

    Any new developments on your S23's - or your flyingboat bases ? I'm using both extensively right now... crossed the pond to the UK from Botwood... boy, that took a long time...!

  4. #4
    SOH-CM-2021 BendyFlyer's Avatar
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    Bunkeister. Glad to help. Yes it is a long way at 150 knots.

    No significant updates to the Shorts Package - a little tidy up was done for P3D V5, nothing significant it all worked fine as a port over. Replaced the P12 compass with one that worked, changed the GPS and updated the McCoy water effects to V4. I have added a few more flying boat locations around the place and I am working on fixing up a lot of scenery issues (namely missing objects or buildings etc) but that has a number of problems relating to P3D and model libraries, overall if you get most of the libraries installed you will get about 90% of what was originally there but waiting for LM to come up with a proper fix to P3DV5 and SIM Director to make this happen properly. If you use FSL Spotlights then I have fixed up the night and interior lighting to give it a proper look and have a ini file for the S23. PM me if you can use it and I will send it to you (or others) I cannot add it here as an attachement for some reason.

    The other main WIP issue is the behaviour of all flying boats and amphibians on the water now that P3D uses NVIDIA's wave motion. None of the previous models for FSX etc were built with this new feature in consideration. Like True Sky it is run deep within the program using complex mathematical algorithms which are also protected from any user altering or manipulating these core sim functions. So manipulating the contact points endlessly to try and smooth this out is not really working out.

    If you find the behaviour on the water a bit bouncy or unrealistic for any flying boat or amphibian put this switch:

    ignore_waves=1

    into the [Contacts] section at the end. It stops the bucking bronco syndrome but you do lose that nice rolling pitch motion.

  5. #5
    Thanks for the news - looks like I'm up to date then. I don't use FS spotlights, that's just not on my radar at all.
    As for wave action, I guess I've been lucky and been in sheltered areas, as I really haven't noticed much odd behavior at all. A little bit of weather vaning but that's about it.
    I really don't know why - I've thousands of dollars invested on aircraft and other addons, but I always end up gravitating to JBK's Shorts - of every type. I think the Calcutta's my fave

  6. #6
    SOH-CM-2021 BendyFlyer's Avatar
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    Bunkeister - Well all the Shorts flying boats are now ported and fixed for P3DV5. The Calcutta is a very pretty aeroplane and it has a nice basic interior as well. I fixed up some instrument and gauge issues in FSX which is in the library here, works fine in P3D as well. Know what you mean about these models, they are simple and honest aeroplanes. Always very appreciative that Jen Kristensen took the time and effort to model them all, it is a unique collection of very rare birds indeed and they all look brilliant now with high level graphics in P3D they are not that shabby at all.

    You think the UK to Canada is a long way - try the S5 or Rangoon from Basra to Melbourne like they did in 1934, it is a very long way at 90 knots. First time I tried it I cracked a 40 knot headwind on day 1 (using real time weather) spent all day in the air on day 1 and which included having to go back to where I started due insufficient fuel to get across the Persian Gulf to Northern Pakistan.

  7. #7
    Bunkie,

    You may find some of the fonts that I have created and distributed over the years to be of use. I used to offer these for free download on a web site, but it died earlier this year, so I am attaching the pack of them. They are pretty widely used by skinners, modelers, decal guys, etc.

    I haven't seen a good photo of the lettering on the Short planes you referenced, but a few of these may be useful at least as a starting point in terms of general proportions.

    The font called "Camp Borden" is the most recent one I did, in 2018, and it was intended for 1920s Canadian military call letters, but it is similar to the general civilian style in use in the UK and Europe in the 1920s and 1930s.

    Other possibilities are RAFWW246 and RAFWW258. These are both generally intended to represent RAF 1930s-40s serial and code letters, but differing in proportions, with RAFWW246 having a 1:4:6 ratio of stroke/width/height and RAFWW258 having a 1:5:8 ratio.

    None of them is likely to be perfect for your needs, but if you play around with bold type, and mess with the ends to get that diagonal clipping that you see on some fonts of the period, they may be adequate. I think I can at least promise that they will be a better starting point that Calibri or Arial or whatever.

    August
    Attached Files Attached Files

  8. #8
    SOH-CM-2021 BendyFlyer's Avatar
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    K5083 - Generous off you to offer those fonts. It is an arcane and mysterious world this font business. Fascinating how many are held under various license and or copyright provisions as well. Yep there is only so much one can do with Calibri or Arial.

  9. #9
    Yes. And if you are talking primarily about the font used for the "Imperial Airways" titles, that may not even have originally been any font for typeface, but really just a style of writing those particular words. The designer may not even have designed any letters not needed for the "Imperial Airways" titles, or worked out any consistent geometry for doing so. In that case, your best bet probably is just to treat the whole thing as a graphic, and scan them off the best photo or model airplane decal sheet you can find.

    August

  10. #10
    August,

    Wow, that's incredibly generous of you, and very much appreciated! I'm certain to find a use for your fonts in the future, if not for the Short boats. Again, thanks very, very much.

    The Basra to Melbourne trip is something I've done... I've got a long history of bopping around the globe in PMDG's finest, then always fall back to something from Jens' Imperial Airways collection... the really crazy part, is that I'll happily do it again!

    I've also just discovered all the CFS2 repaints for the S23 family... they all look gorgeous in P3Dv5. Having found them, I probably won't be making any new S23 (etc) paints for my fleet, I've got a lifetime supply already. But I do need to think about some new squadrons for the old Cook Short Stirling model...! The Stirling, I always think of it as an S.23 that scraped her belly off on a runway... (yes, I don't get out much...).

    Mark

  11. #11
    SOH-CM-2021 BendyFlyer's Avatar
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    Bunkeister - off topic but my interest in the Basra-Australia tour was triggered by the discovery that a kiwi pilot in the RAF who was captain of one of the flight of Rangoons was it turned out the same chap who did the first flight of the Imperial Airways S23 in the Centaurus from England to Australia, Jack Burgess. I actually found an in depth account of the flight in a regional newspaper in Australia about it it was of great interest to many then. Burgess also took the Centaurus across to Fiji and Tonga before coming back and doing the return flight to England. Burgess went on to be the first chief pilot of TEAL and then back to BOAC and the Atlantic Ferry Command during WW2. Fascinating era.

    I know what you mean about these Short Flying boats in the sim. I can punt around in something sophisticated but you cannot beat the sheer fun of this era of flight and the flying boat, which is why I have put so much time and effort into resurrecting and keeping them going in P3D. They are gems!

  12. #12
    That's nice info - my Mum was a Burgess Maybe I'm distantly related...

    It's stories like that that make flying these so much fun. Just thinking about how long it took to get from a to b in those days, and today we just click a mouse button, booking a flight that at most is 19 hours to the furthest corner of the world away from you. Progress, yes, but nowhere near the romance

  13. #13
    SOH-CM-2021 BendyFlyer's Avatar
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    Yep it is a small world sometimes. I recall raising the issue of the accident involving the Pan Am Clipper a Sikorsky S42 off Samoa in another aviation forum, I did not have much information but low and behold I was contacted by a nephew of the captain, Ed Musick and the family was mighty proud of that man and he sent me a copy of the original accident report, fascinating read, they think a fuel dump ignited blowing up the aircraft and killing all on board.. Burgess and his crew were in Auckland and had met them some weeks before and was going to go look for them but alas the outcome was known. George Diemer's Sikorsky (FSX version) is very nice still and works just fine in V5.2 by the way. The daughter of the chief pilot who replaced Jack Burgess at TEAL, Oscar Gardiner, was also in touch and kindly provided me with copies of her fathers log books where he and Burgess and done flights across the Tasman to Sydney in the Arawua. These oldies may be long gone now but they are not forgotten!

  14. #14
    Truly not forgotten... at least in places like this, where we still respect just what it took to take on these problems all those years ago. Those folks didn't have any magenta lines to follow, they truly were blazing a path for others to follow, and just look how they succeeded - people get on airliners today without a thought in the world. All thanks to those pioneers...

    I really want to like the S.42 model, but the total lack of glass on all the windows drives me insane. A small issue, and definitely "nit-picking" I know, but once seen, it can't be unseen... and then I delete it. I just wish someone with the correct modelling skills would come along and just add some glazing... then it could join the ranks with all the others

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