Hi Y'all,
After a few nights of decaling, and painting the yellow on the wing leading edges - here's an update . . .
Odd things about these decals. some good - some bad.
First - they went on like a dream ! They were very thin and conformed to the surfaces incredibly well with a moderate application of micro-sol. Even with the very fine recessed surface detail on this kit - they conformed to show it after they dried on. Very nice !
Second - I made a mistake placing the letter codes on the starboard side. You don't really notice it when you look at it from either side . . .
But when you see it from above - you can tell it's off. I didn't correct it fast enough and it was settled down pretty thoroughly by the time I noticed my mistake.
In the decaling diagram the starboard roundel is slightly forward of the port one - but not THIS much !
And then the decal sheet had two mistakes that I noticed. The first was the underwing roundels. The white ring between the blue outer circle and the inner red dot was missing. it was just transparent there. I corrected it by using the other (different sized) under-roundels that came with the kit, cut off their blue outer rings and applying only the white and red parts. Then I placed the "correct roundels over these so that the white ring shone through the transparent part. it turned out OK to my eyes.
The second mistake was the square stencils that are unique to british aircraft. They show up mostly on the underside of the wings. These are pretty much the same size as the squares that I have on a 1/48 Spitfire - so theyre pretty big and bold - a little too much.
Here's an overall view. I would love to hear any critiques . . .
It's gettin late - time to hit the sack.
Model on my friends !
Chris