NASA blue?

The 747 Shuttle carrier is a standard blue scheme. If that's not big enough you got issues :)

I have no idea what color blue it is though.

Allen

That's gloss insignia blue, much too dark. I kinda need to find that colour myself, I've got a bunch of NASA planes in the works :)

Dom

I think that the largest NASA bird would be the Lockheed C-141.

Tom

Thats actually American Airlines blue on that 747.

"Only a Gentleman can insult me, and a true Gentleman never will..."

Isn't their B-52H painted that way?

Yes, but somebody already beat my guess with the NASA 747 hauling the Shuttle.

Tom

The standard blue color used on the main stripe for their current scheme is not an official FS color but a paint mix from Dupont ( I recall). The brand name is Ditzler (spelling?). Somewhere in my notes I actually have the exact Ditzler paint numbers used by NASA but I have not been able to find this reference since one of my past house moves. I believe there are at least two different blues being used for the main stripe. There is a dark blue as can be seen on the NASA F-18 and a slightly lighter blue as seen on their B-52H and B 747.

With that said, I have found that you can get quite close to the color of the stripes used by NASA by matching up some blue stripe decals available from several sources. I am not near my decal storage area right now to give the exact company and decal number but there are at least two versions of blue stripe decals that look pretty good. I did this for a 1/144 NASA Guppy and it looked spot on.

For those interested in NASA aircraft, I have posted a partial (read: in progress!) list of NASA aircraft flown in NASA markings that I have been able to confirm. Here's a link to the page:

Mike

If you are talking about the 747 used to carry the shuttle, why not try and see what American Airlines used to paint the red white and blue stripes in the first place ???

It was their A/C after all :)

"Only a Gentleman can insult me, and a true Gentleman never will..."

Which brings up a very funny story. True even. Some years ago I was an insurance adjustor. We insured a local retail paint store. A smallish airline based in Oakland, CA, leased a 747 from American Airlines and repainted the 747 in their own colors. The lease ended. Under the terms of the lease, the bird was to be repainted in American Airlines colors before being returned. The Oakland-based airline went to our paint retailer to get the necessary paints, specifying American Airlines red, white and blue. Our guy went through his catalogues. He found the white and the blue no trouble, along with orange, but the customer didn't ask for orange. No red, at first. Finally, after a lot of research, he found out what red AA used. He ordered the three colors in the amounts specified by the customer, and delivered them. The Oakland people did up the bird in the red, white and blue according to what they thought the AA specs were, and returned it to AA.

AA was hopping mad to see how their airplane was painted. It turns out that the primary livery colors were blue, white and orange; the red was only used for fire-warning stencils, fire extinguishers, emergency exit markers and the like. They stripped the plane and repainted it themselves, then presented a bill for umpty-dump thousands of bucks to the Oakland carrier. The Oakland guys turned around and demanded the money from our paint guy for giving them the wrong stuff. What saved his ass (or, more precisely, the insurance company's money) was the original purchase order, which specified Amercian Airlines red, white and blue, without any language discussing how it was to be used.

Mark Schynert

Good point! It all depends on which time frame you are modeling a NASA