Bish - excellent display of your finished build - but gosh that must take up quite a bit of space. Rigging size looks fine from here (great stuff), but if you wish to make the wires to stand out more you can darken them.
Mike - lovely looking Eindecker, and I noticed you have added dirt to the finish as well. Exactly how are you achieving these subtle nuances in colour - airbrush, layered filters, weathering powders?
John - nice addition to the house there, great place to enjoy your model building during the summer months.
Yes, the Alps printer would of solved a lot of problems, but as I understand it, that make of printer is on the extinction list. The company itself is still in business creating other electrical/computer gadgets, so most printers that can be found for sale are used refurbished models. Needless to say, prices have sky rocketed.
Quite right, ink jet printers are not designed to print white ink, nor am I aware of any entity working on changing that - seems 3D printing is where most r&d energy is being funnelled into. I had thought of changing to a lighter base coat on the model so that I could use the orginal plan of clear decals, but this would of posed another problem: any overlap of decals would create a darker tone in said area, and a decal that was trimmed short of a panel line would leave an exposed section of the lighter base coat, which again all would have to be touched up afterwards.
Pre-painting white on clear decal film - interesting idea, but I am doubtful. In the past I had experimented with applying flat and gloss coats on decal paper, and tried printing over that. Results were just a runny mess. The decal paper is specialy coated to hold printer ink, so covering it up just wouldn't do.
regards,
Jack