If there's one aspect of the UK drone laws which is particularly grating, it's the requirement to display your operator id on every model. To add insult to injury, it's now a whopping 19 characters!
There is something we can do though: make the actual label as small as possible...
It’s all about the font!
The CAA rules state that the operator id must be "clear and in block capitals taller than 3mm"... but - aha! - no mention of length. Obviously the narrower the font, the shorter the label. So the next question was: what is the narrowest font available?
Following a session playing with fonts on my Windows 10 machine, I found what I was looking for. It's a font called ‘Gill Sans MT condensed’. Using this font at 13.5 points, my CAA label is 3 mm hight, and just 33 mm long. It actually looks okay on the model (well, as okay as a CAA label can look...).
I've prepared a Microsoft Word file with the font embedded within it, which means it should show even if the font is not installed in your computer.
Here's a screenshot (scroll down further for the actual download link):
The file is in .DOCX format, and can be downloaded from:
https://rc-soar.com/files/CAA_OpID/CAA-op-id-template.zip
If you've found a font which is even narrower and still legible, do leave a comment!
1 comment:
On my Windows 10 with a very old version of Office, I found a font called "Birch Std" which at 14pt makes my Operator ID just 3.5mm high and 29mm wide. I think it is legible at that size.
Ken Croft
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