(My) British/Canadian aircraft fonts

[k5083]

Last night I bought and downloaded Marek's 1:50 Wellington Mk.X from ecardmodels. When I loaded the pdf to check it out, Acrobat flashed me a warning about a (fortunately trivial) issue with one of the fonts Marek used. What tickled me about this was that Acrobat identified the font, and it was one that I designed.

In the early 1990s I had a small web site of profile artwork of British and commonwealth aircraft, and to make the process easier, I designed several TrueType fonts to replicate British and Canadian (but also usable for some Aussie, Indian, etc.) aircraft lettering. I posted the fonts to the site for free use and they kind of took off, being mirrored on many other sites. My site is long gone now but several sites still host them (a search for "RAF font" or "RCAF font" turns up several links). I still hear about them being used for various purposes -- making decal sheets, flightsim skins, reference books, and even painting full-size restored aircraft -- but until last night, wasn't sure they are being used in commercial card models/repaints other than my own (e.g. the RCAF version of Fiddlers Green's Chipmunk).

Now that I know Marek, a designer I greatly respect, uses my fonts, I'm curious who else is. As far as I know they are the only RAF, RN, RCAF, and RCN fonts out there, but the way to be sure is to double click on the TTF file so you see the view of all the characters. At the top of that window is the font name (not the same as the file name, which anyone can change in Explorer) and if it ends in my initials _ATH, it's one of mine.

So -- if you're using them, I'd appreciate a shout-out and to know which models or repaints you're using them in. In return I can offer some tech support; such as information on their size, placement and usage on the full-size aircraft, which I researched when I designed them. One day I'll do a new site, make the fonts available again and have a list of where they've been used. I'll never ask for any compensation for the use of these; they were designed to be free, and the satisfaction of keeping inappropriate modern fonts like Arial and Helvetica off of models, illustrations and restored aircraft is enough reward.

Thanks,

August

[airdave]

Thats odd...if Marek's file is relying on installed Fonts
then only a handful of people on this planet will see the correct lettering.

Fonts should be converted to curves at some point, most easily during
the PDF creation and save. Odd that Marek would miss that.

I probably have those RCAF and RAF fonts...I have so many.
I mix and match, pulling individual letters and numbers from different fonts.
But most of the time, I will alter or rebuild as vector objects just to match
the particular aircraft differences.

Unfortunately, most fonts are not completely accurate to real life applications.
Considering the handpainted techniques by many different painters,
there can end up being a lot of variations in the actual numbers and letters.
WW2 American aircraft obviously being the worst! lol

[3Turner]

If the file you purchased was the BRYT Wellington, I get an error as well. Or more specifically "The font 'OFUKJQ+RAF_PW_ATH' contains bad /Widths."

Search of Google says that the embedded font threw an error and the file should be recreated from the original to clear it. The one currently in the store was a correction due to the camouflage being the wrong color on one part. Bet that messed up the font.

[k5083]

Airdave, Marek embedded the font rather than relying on an installed font, so it will be seen by all users. They function as vector objects in the pdf file.

I agree with you that modification is often desirable. For that matter, Marek did not select the most appropriate of my fonts for his application. But, at least it's better than Arial.

In this case the font appears to display properly in the pdf despite the error message.

August