1/800 decals

Wasn't that a bad high school drug education film, Scared Straight? Now I'm telling on my age. You are correct, even a small number of aircraft, at that scale, is a project in and of itself. I topped out at 37 on my Big E build:

Okay, I'm scared straight. Maybe the 1/700 decals would work. I work in 1/35 armor most of the time and didn't do the math on the different scales. I'm not doing a whole air wing, only 20-22 aircraft, but that's still a big undertaking. Thanks for the advice gents.

Spamicus

Thanks for the input gents. I was hoping to get away without making my own decals, but hey chalk it up to a new experience. Thanks again.

There is a big difference making homemade decals when you have to produce white as part of the decal. If the decals are all dark, to be applied over a light color, it is pretty easy.

However, if the decals have to have white in them, that is something else. Inkjet printers cannot print white. If you have an Alps, fine. If not, you need to use white decal sheets.  These require you to either cut out the decal exactly (maybe a bit hard to do in 1:800 scale), or else set the image background color to the exact match to the paint you will be applying the decals over, which may require a calibration of your computer system's color.

Another thought - at these tiny scales, and I have done one (1) air wing - the difference between 1/800 and 1/700 is going to be very, very minimal, in my opinion. Look how frickin' small the airplanes are to start with! Say that, hypothetically, the NAVY on the side of a jet was 3 feet long in real life. In 1/700 scale, that's 0.0042 inches. In 1/800, it's 0.0037 inches. See where I'm going with this?

Making that many tiny decals can be a royal pain (ask me how I know), so rather than go down that route, take a look at the offerings. I would start here - http://www.starfighter-decals.com/index.html - and then decide if you want to make an entire air wing's decals all by yourself. If you've got nothing but time, then go for it. If you're looking at decaling 30-40 itty bitty airplanes, using ready-made decals is one less thing to  over.

P.S. - you also have to consider how may decals go on each aircraft. For example, each of the Hawkeyes on my USS Enterprise build had 12 individual decals ...

Thanks for the input gents. I was hoping to get away without making my own decals, but hey chalk it up to a new experience. Thanks again.

My . Reduce a 1/700 set that is just what you need to approx. (or exactly) 1/800 on your computer, then have someone make the decals for you. I'm no computer expert, but there are lots of guys out there that make their own decals. Good luck.

Jim

1/800 is one of those "odd" scales, and I don't know of a source for air wing decals off hand.

As to the color of the canopies, it's a matter of personal taste. I, personally, dislike gloss black or dark gray, or the blue that some use. After some experimentation, I decided Testors Steel from the little bottle, no. 1180, overcoated with Tamiya acrylic Smoke, no. X-19, looked the most like glass without being too garish.