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Lettering on top of trailer

Stacey K

Stacey K

I like making signs
Our local Boy Scouts have a trailer I'll be lettering next week. They would like a number on top in case of theft, so it can be seen from an airplane. (lots of different people will be using it and with that, it's likely it doesn't get properly locked at some point) Apparently this is a thing so I'm hoping someone knows what size I should make them? He just told me they need to be seen from an airplane...I'm not real up to date with airplane heights. Thank you!
 
Gino

Gino

Premium Subscriber
Many of the local police departments do this to their cruisers, trucks and equipment trailers. The numbers we made were usually about 18" tall and not at all condensed. For them, it was helicopters, from a few hundred feet, but an airplane, might be larger from a higher altitude.
 
U

unclebun

Active Member
Here's an example of two different ways to do this on a typical 6x12 trailer roof. The one with "TROOP 27" has 19" letters. That gives a 190' easy readability and 400' readable.
The one with just "27" has 37" letters, yielding a 379' easy readability and almost 800' readable distance. The smaller letters can obviously be cut from 24" vinyl, while the bigger ones can be cut one letter at a time from 30" vinyl.
trailer roof.jpg
 
rjssigns

rjssigns

Active Member
Airplanes are 500' minimum altitude. When I was lettering police cruisers they wanted the "helicopter numbers" on the roof as big as humanly possible.
 
Stacey K

Stacey K

I like making signs
Very informative friends, thank you very much! This will allow me to present a couple options
 
Texas_Signmaker

Texas_Signmaker

Very Active Signmaker
I made some of these for hot air balloon racing teams. We just put two or three large numerals on the tops of the trailers or vans... as big as possible, so the balloonist could identify where their crew was located.
 
Gino

Gino

Premium Subscriber
Texas_Signmaker said:
I made some of these for hot air balloon racing teams. We just put two or three large numerals on the tops of the trailers or vans... as big as possible, so the balloonist could identify where their crew was located.
Click to expand...
Why wouldn't they just use a banner and strap it to the roof ?? Lot easier and can be re-used lotsa times.
 
Scotchbrite

Scotchbrite

No comment
Texas_Signmaker said:
They have to drive with the number on the top... banner would fly away.
Click to expand...
That reminds me of a cheap political candidate customer we had one time. They got a bunch of former candidates to donate their old 4x4 and 4x8 plywood campaign signs. They didn't want to pay to redo the graphics so they had us print banners. They didn't want the banners finished at all. They stapled the banners to the wood panel.

They came back bitching that our banners were no good because some of them tore off on the way to the install. Keep in mind these were assembled signs, MDO dado'd into wood posts. The signs were stacked on a trailer and since the wood posts were attached there was about a 3" gap between each sign panel. They were driving over 65mph and the wind flow from the speed of the vehicle was being directed right at the edge of the banners where they were "fastened" to the wood signs.
 
gnubler

gnubler

Active Member
Nice. At a recent election here in the backwoods one of the candidates made her own sign with a sheet of plywood and what looked like colored electrical tape strips formed into letters. Crayon would have looked better.
 
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