Model Railroader's free decals

I love the idea of real decals in newstand issues. Your sales would increase sharply because subscibers would buy an extra issue to get that one decal they can't live without! I have often wondered why there are not bound in decals or photo etchings. The promotional material could be tied to a project in the mag. Best regards Woody

Someone higher than Lawrence Hansen or David Voss? Impossible!
I feel kinda sorry for those who are not fortuneate enough to have a friend(who lives about two hours away, mind you) that has all the graphics proccessing equipment to make any type of transfer I want(including dry transfers and waterslide decals)!

QUOTE: Originally posted by Lawrence Hansen --I haven't run it past the Powers That Be

see, there are higher powers at work here...

I got the idea from a couple of model rocketry sites I frequent:
http://www.dars.org/jimz/rp00.htm and http://www.rocketshoppe.com/decals.htm The file sizes vary considerably, but it looks like ones with pretty good resolution can be kept to a meg or less, though a lot of model rocket decals are less detailed than, say, those for scale aircraft. That'd still take a looooong time to download on a 56K dial-up connection, but often my level of patience is often linked to how much I'm paying for something.

Of course, at the moment this is just a colorful Idea I came up with as a way around tangling with the post office--I haven't run it past the Powers That Be yet. Making your own decals seems to involve a certain amount of trial and error and wrangling with the computer. Plus, the quality of your finished decals depends on the resolution of your inkjet printer. My $30 Lexmark probablyl wouldn't cut it. The other issue is that you can't print white or metallic colors (ALPS made printers that could, but they've been discontinued

I love the idea of free decals as PDF files. What you will have to balance is getting the resolution high enough for the images to be crips, but without making the file itself too huge. The human eye can resolve to about a tenth of a millimeter. I'll let you guys worry about how many DPI that is.

Brian W.

Ilike that idea too!!!! Also, one other option to consider, would be the freebee inserts on the news stand issues..... Just a thought........

Ron

I like the idea. Sort of like the theme-based decal for the IPMS Nats each year. -Ed

Soumds like a good idea

I like that idea. It works for me.
Lee

Excellent question! I believe that in the past we have bound a sheet of decals into issues of FineScale, but it was before my time here.

One problem is cost. Model Railroader has a much larger subscriber base than FSM, so they have more discretionary resources (read $$$) for such bonuses.

Another problem, recently discovered, is the post office. The very issue of MR you're talking about led to the PO informing us, I am told, that they require extra postage above the standard periodicals rate in order to include such items. (Either a new regulation or one that nobody knew about before.) Why? Decals are printed on paper just like the rest of the magazine, aren't they? Government agencies, you know.

So it may be quite a while before you see a free decal sheet in MR again, let alone FSM. However, an idea has just occured to me.....

.....How would you feel about the idea of posting a decal sheet here on the website in a PDF file, which could be downloaded and printed out on some of that special inkjet decal paper? (This process is pretty common in the model rocket "cloning" community.....)

Any thoughts?

Good idea. Scale Auto had some free phantom SAE winston cup stock car markings a few years ago.
Lee