orange and white checks

Hi Stephen,

    The "Follow Me" trucks carried orange & white checkered flags ("Airfield Safety" flag) or had checkered panels on the rear of the vehicles.    

 

 Also, high buildings and water tanks/towers on an airfield (or military installations) were red & white checkered to make them more visible to air traffic.    

Frank

These markings are seldom seen at civil airports, I think it is more of a military thing, particularly the buildings.

jeaton01 wrote:

These markings are seldom seen at civil airports, I think it is more of a military thing, particularly the buildings.

ree

Disagree.   The orange & white flag is often seen on construction and other non-resident vehicles on US airports.   The flag is also flown on construction cranes raised in the vicinity of airports.

Very cool gents.  I wonder what the provenance of this design was?

The flag, yes.  But not the building markings on water towers, etc.  They are also on the localizer transmitter building if the field has them, but that is a small structure.  I guess my point is that the large scale checkers are a miltary marking. 

It makes sense that it originated in the home based military aviation training arena and was adopted by the civilian aviation organizations.  That gives us a time line of about 1919 (or earlier in the USA and Canadian 1916 -17 training camps) thru to present day.  Realistically it could be a (1911-1915)  cross over from France, Great Britain or Italy.  Sort of a landmark tower in foul weather?

If a pilot has to land in foul weather /fog knowing the height of the squares and the standard amount of squares could give him a realistic expectation of ground level. Then the "follow me" flags on the back of vehicles would be a nautral progression as an airfield identification.