Syracuse still has its 135-foot Emergency-1 (That's what they called them when it entered service in June of 1985). It's built on the Hurricane chassis and is one of twenty-seven 135' aerials built by them. It is currently assigned to Rescue Company 1 as a third piece, due on target hazards such as Syracuse University dormitories, high-rise apartments and hotels, and basically anywhere else the Rescue Company officer feels it may be of potential use. It's designation is currently Rescue Truck, although that may change soon.
We did an in-house rehab of the vehicle at our Division of Maintenance a bit over a year ago, repainting it to our new dark red color scheme (it looks pretty sharp, too - I'll post a photo when I'm not on my IPad). The Syracuse Fire Department is currently, and predictably, undergoing the same budgetary pains as most other municipal fire departments and we are facing the potential closure of an engine company and the subsequent realignment of other companies. We had reinstituted Squad Company 1 a couple of years ago to perform vertical vent duties, and they ended up having responsibility most of the time for actually operating the Rescue Truck at alarm scenes it responded to, so it will in all likelihood be reassigned to that company as a second piece with the same response parameters it had previously. Not sure what we'll call it yet, maybe Squad Truck.
It certainly has its uses, although its actually alarm response numbers are low. While as a fireground commander it's a nice tool to have in my box, it's very difficult to justify the million-dollar cost of replacing it. It still passes its third-party aerial certification every year and is in very nice shape with only 17,000 miles on the clock, but at the end of the day it's still a 28-year-old rig and eventually a decision will have to be made. Tough times call for tough decisions, but that's what good management is all about. Reality has a way of focusing your attention wonderfully, and at the end of the day it's all about keeping the maximum number of asses in the maximum number of seats.
I have been playing around a lot with Microsoft Office Word Art to do the lettering. Most of the same fonts that you would find for any other writing are available.
I'm not sure which drawing you're talking about, but for the Rescue aerial I used Eurostile. I've done quite a bit of emergency vehicle graphics and lettering to make some money on the side and for some reason I really like the look of that font, especially in Extended Bold. So when I saw it available in Word Art I had to give it a try.
As for the air and light rig and the Pierce tiller I used Rockwell. I extended it and then arched it up.
It is a little time consuming though to "trim" off some of the pixels around the edges, especially fonts that have serifs because the letters tend to overlap, but I've been pretty happy with the end result. I'll post a few of the lettering styles that I've drawn up.
Here a few of the lettering drawings I've done up. I haven't even used some of them yet, just draw and save them for some later use. All done using Microsoft Word Art.
While I'm here, way back in 1986 at one of the conventions I attended I came across a pictorial history book of the Edmonton Alberta, Canada FD. The cover caught my and I couldn't put it down so $25.00 dollars later I was all mine. Anyway, I was recently looking at it again and decided to take a shot at drawing one of the pumpers from the book. I'm sure there are a bunch of details missing. I've never been to Edmonton so the entire drawing was done strictly from a single picture in that book.
The rig is a 1975 Thibault. I'm going to try some more but the book is primarily black and white so it's a little hard to get some of the details.
The fonts in MS Paint are not that great and I've tried Photoshop as well.
In particular I was wondering which fonts and sizes were used on the Aerialscope. Especially the "21 Truck" and the tiny numbers on the compartment doors.
People complaining about spam in the spam mail box... Huh, what'll they think of next?
The 21 Truck was also done using WordArt and the font is Arial Black. It should be the default font that comes up when you open the screen. WordArt allows you to increase or decrease the size of the letters in both length and height in one of two ways. There's a small scale on the side that you can use or just drag the mouse around. I honestly couldn't tell you the actual size because I just kept increasing and decreasing until it fit the sign board on the boom.
All of the "goldleaf" and compartment door numbers I did myself just drawing with the mouse.
Quote:While I'm here, way back in 1986 at one of the conventions I attended I came across a pictorial history book of the Edmonton Alberta, Canada FD. The cover caught my and I couldn't put it down so $25.00 dollars later I was all mine. Anyway, I was recently looking at it again and decided to take a shot at drawing one of the pumpers from the book. I'm sure there are a bunch of details missing. I've never been to Edmonton so the entire drawing was done strictly from a single picture in that book.
The rig is a 1975 Thibault. I'm going to try some more but the book is primarily black and white so it's a little hard to get some of the details.
Good job ... you captured the essence of the rig nicely.
Here is One more I finished up finally. I decided to do all 4 sides of one of the local Fire Distict's Engine co's. It is a Rosenbauer pumper out of Station 53 in Prescott, AZ, (unknown year) Credits To KDWMAEMT, RIEMT, Fyreline, ParamedicIL, JFong, Engine5161, Firemark, Leadfirerescue, FFEMTwakeman,ladder13, EMTChris67, grubber and sclpdexplorer. If I have forgotten anybody, I apologize. let me know and I will make corrections.
I was looking through the Apparatus photos and started looking through the Pacific Northwest thread. I like all the apparatus with the front mount pumps so I did up a generic version. Credits are posted in the drawing.
This is a rig that I'm sure many people know of, particularly for it's graphics. I had two pictures of it, both from nearly identical angles so much of the details are probably missing. I doesn't appear to have a turntable pedestal or controls, I'm thinking because it's a 55 ft. that they may be at the rear near the hose bed, similar to a squrt or older Snorkle? If anyone wants to upgrade it, go for it.
Last one for tonight is something a little different and maybe doesn't belong here but it is fire apparatus. A FD Snow Cat style vehicle with a little Emergency One influence for the cab. I borrowed the graphics idea from the previous dept's rig and got the overall idea for the vehicle from photos of the Denver Int'l Airport's Snow Cat unit.
I've posted many rigs drawn with the old MS Paint program......But now have a new computer, running Windows 7. As everyone knows, the new Paint program on Win. 7 SUCKS!!! Where can I get the previous version?
Quote:I've posted many rigs drawn with the old MS Paint program......But now have a new computer, running Windows 7. As everyone knows, the new Paint program on Win. 7 SUCKS!!! Where can I get the previous version?
I went in to my program files on my old WinXP desktop and put the program on a flash drive. I ran it from there with minimal issues on my Win7 laptop (program would "stop working" after a while so saving and resaving then saving again became normal for me so I didn't lose work) and run it right on my Win8 desktop with ZERO issues so far. Good luck
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