Okay, I am bringing this up again as I have finally decided to finish a bunch of models that have been laying about forever. I am trying to determine if the orange version of this rocket had the stenciled on logo or a hand painted on logo. There’s a difference bu I can’t tell from the pics I see. Anyone know the answer? I see that the MMI kit showed the stenciled version. Peter, are you out there? No offense to anyone who is an Aerobee Hi expert.

IN ROTW, Alway has two Aerobee HI rounds, an Air Force in white airframe and a Navy in orange. Both have the Aerojet General/Aerobee Hi logo in thin squiggly black lettering. I assume that's the hand painted version you're referring to. FWIW.

__________________
I like the unusual, the off beat, the avant-garde. No 3/4 FNC for me!

Yes, that was the first place I looked. In the photo of this rocket, it is clear that the Aerobee Hi logo is on there right below the Aerojet-General logo (which I have found by looking for 1950’s ads and an annual report). The problem is that the reflection of the sun along the body of the craft nearly obliterates the view. So, unless there’s another photo out there (that’s not on the internet, cuz’ I’m looking) it’s just a guess.

Kind of like guessing at the colors of WWI aircraft. Very little definitive evidence exists. All the pictures are B&W.

Eyewitnesses could likely remember if anyone knows.

I'm not referring to the photo, but the dimensional drawings on pg. 106, 4th edition.
The top right corner clearly shows the two logos and the lettering style.

__________________
I like the unusual, the off beat, the avant-garde. No 3/4 FNC for me!

As far as the actual font for "Aerobee Hi" goes, the logo might have actually been drawn free-hand by a graphic artist. Very common back in those pre-computer typesetting days.

The company I work for had an old typescript logo like that - a graphic artist friend of the founder had drawn it a gazillion years ago. For a while we inserted an actual .TIF graphic into every place where we used the company logo. Then eventually, one of our current graphic artists found a font that came awfully close, so we switched to that.

__________________
Lawrence
NAR #29660
I am a SAM - a SAM I am! (#489)
"Who would ever trade a simple, easy-to-understand command line for a confusing GUI and a clumsy mouse? Madness!" --Doswonk, ca. 1993

Yes, that is true and as I find more and more examples of the names Aerobee and Astrobee painted on rockets, it is clear there is variation—most easily explained by hand rendering or some other hand done production. Even so, hand rendered signs are usually based on a font. Most sign painters know a few different ones by memory. Within the context of that font are special characters and ligatures. The purpose is to make the writing consistent across signs.

Note this: the first 4 letters of the Aerobee logo appear identical to the first 4 letters of the Aerojet-General logotype. See below ad. It was used for most of the 1950s and slightly modified in the late 1950s before a complete redesign in the 1960s. There’s no doubt that the Aerobee logo had a standard (font) that was followed by whoever was sent to paint it on the rocket (or whatever technique was used). I am attempting to find the best and clearest reference for that.

I would most likely have to find the person or persons who did the hand rendering to find out what that standard was or find a graphic designer who did the work. I am posting what I have so far. I am trying to find a good reference for H in Hi.

Romie

Attached Thumbnails

 

Attached Files

aerobee_hi_logo.pdf (571.9 KB, 33 views)

Do mot take the exact font of the Aerobee Hi logo in Rockets of the World as authoritative. I did the best I could with the information I had. I know that it was a script logo, and I reproduced it as best I could. I know that in some of my drawings, I resorted to using a really crappy scropt font that was the only thing I could come up with at the time. In general, I was working from photographs of the logo on rockets that were often angled in a way that made exact reproduction impossible.

This page also gives some clues about the logo: https://1000logos.net/aerojet-rocketdyne-logo/

Peter,
Thanks for that. That graphic (at the link you shared) helped me make sense of the whole thing by showing me a history of the company logos. I am basically extrapolating from there. I have reasonable references for the “Aerobee” part. Just working on the “Hi”. I will use the A as a reference for weight and position as I have one other image where the logo is more clearly visible but at an oblique angle.

I am curious as to how you acquire images for your books. I work for a company that has been building aircraft since WWII and our library of images is very hard to sort through as no one seemed to think keeping an accurate photographic history was a high priority. Also, as the company changed hands, the new corporate entity didn’t want anyone remembering the old guard and would just dispose of things. Many things only exist in random photos.

BTW, the model I am building (based a BT-60-sized tube) is from an article you had published in American Spacemodeling many years ago. I have it here somewhere. So thanks for that and your many fine books.

Romie

I use as many sources as I can find. I'm not even sure how many of my sources even still exist or are still in the same locations. I started researching around 1990 or so. Early on, I used the NASA photo archive at headquarters in DC. I used the National Air and Space Museum archives. I used the DoD photo archive, and a little bit from the National Archives. I wrote off to NASA centers. I was given photos by people who had collected images back in the 1960's. More recently, collectors have been kind enough to send me scans. And there are some nice scans here and there on the internet.

There's no one answer to that question, and a lot of my sources may or may not exist anymore.

Since the topic here is Aerobee, I'd say my best source was the National Air and Space Museum archive.

Enjoy.

Attached Thumbnails