Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Custom Skins => Topic started by: Citabria on March 25, 2006, 08:02:48 PM
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hey guys I was at the mighty 8th air force library in geargia the other day and found one book on colors and markings but didnt photo copy it...
it explained dimensions of USAAF star and bars...
everything is based off of the radius of the star.
the bars (the white part from edge to star tip) are 1/2 the radius of the star
the border around the white bars and the star is 1/8 the radius of the star.
but the part I forgot was how tall the bars are. i cant remember if they are 1/4 the radius or some othe rdimension. anyone have this info?
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(http://www.dangreve.com/usinsig.jpg)
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thx waffle!
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One dimenision I don't see on that pic is the length of the white side bars. My sources state that this was equal to the radius (1/2 D) of the blue disk (not including its border), but was measured from the outer end to the point of tangency with the blue disk. Thus, the bar's upper and lower edges were a bit longer than this where they continued on to meet the receding edge of the blue disk.
I also believe that the original height of the bars was 1/4 D, not 5/16 D. However, this made the upper edges of the bars a bit lower than the line across the tops of the side points of the star. Thus, they eventually went to the wider bar to make cutting the stencil easier, because the top of the bars and the star points were on the same line. I've only ever seen the narrower bars on planes that originally had the round insignia, and the bars were added in the field. I think pretty much all planes coming equipped with the new insignia had the wider bars.
Another feature often seen on planes in service when the insignia changed was that the border was of course fresher paint than the disk. The border was especially darker when it got repainted in blue over the briefly used red. Also, a lot of planes with the round insignia had the white star painted over in light gray, and then had the bars added in white.
A couple other useful tidbits...
The red circle in the middle of the star was tangent to imaginary lines between the inner points of the star, and did not touch the inner points. Lotsa folks blow this one.
Also, the USN tail stripes were just the red and white, without the vertical blue stripe.