P-51D Mustang – Instrumentation Panel

I have recently been working on updates to the Ordinate and Cad package (as noted in the previous posting) and also developing the Instrumentation panel assemblies for the P-51D Mustang.

What started out as a mere curiosity is actually turning out to be a fairly intensive project requiring a lot of research.

For the P-51D there are at least 4 variations on the main instrumentation panel for the early and late models. The U-shaped Support frame has 4 variations and just as many for the lower instruments panel set at 20 degrees to the main panel. It is important to get the correct combination of components for the various model numbers which is where a lot of my time is spent on the research.

Part of that research is, of course, getting the label text just right which is where I encountered a lot of frustration. The generic text font used on the Mustang and many of the contemporary aircraft at that time was the MS-33558. There is a TTF font available online for download but the design is not very good with problems of self-intersecting edges and spacing definition.

Using this font in CAD systems will result in problems with embossing or extruding.

Typically I had to find out why, so I downloaded a copy of Fontforge to analyze the characters and identify the problems. Most of the characters are fine but there are at least 7 that have intersecting line problems. However, due to the nature of the font construction process, it is very difficult to identify the problem areas and thereby to devise a solution.

I spent a few hours looking into this but font development is a relatively new procedure for me and I did not achieve any satisfactory results. This I think needs an expert touch. I appreciate the work that was done in developing this TTF but please whoever designed it just a bit more attention to detail would have saved me a lot of work.

In the interim, I decided to use the closest font I could find on my system which was a default SolidEdge font that is similar in style. I had SolidEdge as a trial program a while back and thankfully it left the fonts behind when I uninstalled it.

Another small point worth noting is the color of the label text. The images above show the early P-51D version arrangement and you will notice in the bottom left corner of the first image is a selection of text in red. It is “EMERGENCY” with an associated note. The drawing states that this is RED on a black background but many of the photos I have seen of this particular version show the text in white. So the question is did NAA change this at some stage or is it just down to restorers’ preference?