Caerbannog

Would be nice - but it could be the old Esci mold as well

Yes please!

Klear will be too thin in one layer to give the needed support. Maybe several layers will help.

I will split my 2 pence: 1. Old decals: As you know you can get rid of the yellowing by exposure to UV light. Simplest solution is to tape them to a window for some days. Best bet to keep them intact is to apply Micro Liquid Decal Film by brush on each single decal, let it dry completely and only then put them in water. Alternatively you can use about any clear lacquer but as Giorgio N said - these may or may not be up to the task. What they definitely will not do is to react decal setting solution. I strongly suggest you take the efforts to get the Microscale product. Speaking of decal setting solutions: Some old decals are amazingly suborn. Old Italeri decals are leading my list in this regard (ever tried to make them conform to the corrugated surfaces of a Ju 52 or SR-71?). So, two more tips/things I do: - Test the decals using one or two from the sheet which you will not need for your build. - Scan the decal sheet before you cut it up (300dpi at least). I always do this, which leads me to: 2. Printing own decals: This is nice as you can obviously create whatever markings you like, depending on your skills that is. You can either redo lost decals (too old to safe or damaged or...) or do completely new ones. When you look closely on kit supplied decals you can find more mistakes than one should think. Even aftermarket sheets can be wrong (just as the plastic kits themselves). On my last build I had to replace almost half of the aftermarket sheet, because wrong letter font and wrong insignia size. That said: If printing own decals is an option, you should have a close eye on the old decals and consider if it is worth restoring them. The computer program you use for the graphics is up to you. I ended up doing mine in CorelDraw (has something to do with the print service I sometimes use). Otherwise Illustrator would be my choice. Both work with vectors which is nice when you do insignias once and can scale them as needed without a loss in quality. Same for stencils and such. Regarding the correct colour values there are several sites on the internet like e-paint.co.uk. Here you can look up the colour in question (Post Office Red for RAF roundels for example) and use the given CMYK values in your artwork. Even if your printer setting is not OK you have the best possible match in the data itself. Better not use RGB if you do print files. For the text like stencils or "USAF" you can find suitable fonts free to download on the internet (search for "AmarilloUSAF" for the most common USAF letters). For the printing on decal paper you can either use an ink jet or a laser printer (or more exotic types I never tried). Big advantage of the laser printer is you do not have to seal the decals afterwards. Ink jet printed decals must be sealed but frankly I never managed to print a single sheet which was not blurry or smudged or such on an ink jet. I am just too stupid for this technology. Beware that the sheets maybe in a different size than the printing paper you usually use (here in Germany this is A4 but the decal sheets I have are mostly letter size) - best to have the artwork page in the decal paper size from the start. As Giorgio N said: The decals you print on clear carrier film are not opaque (except black printed areas maybe) - they lack the white base colour found on common decal sheets. So you end up with a window-colour like decal. This is fine as long as the kit is painted white (Saturn V, XB-70, early AFW Vulcan and so on). If your kit is a darker colour you have to get white under the print. Either use white decal paper and carefully cut around each single decal, or prime you kit white, mask the areas to be decaled, paint the kit, remove the mask to reveal the white areas and apply the decals to these (works best with large insignias and such) or use a print service which can print white (like druckeronkel.de in Germany - the reason why I use CorelDraw... They are great, maybe not cheap but very good). If you go this route you will obviously have to add the white base areas to your artwork as well - otherwise the printer will not know to print white. Of course you can also decide to print all black decals at home and all which need a white base to a printer, which will maybe be more cheaper in the end. Another option which I used for nose art decals (or other with a complex form, difficult to mask) is to print two decals: One with the outline of the complete decals and the decal itself. After printing I will fill the outline with white paint (brushed on), apply this first and cover it with the printed full-colour decal. This also works but the result is a wee bit thicker. The same trick works with special colours like gold and silver btw. Finally it makes sense to have some information printed with your decals so you still remember after a year what this or that decal was meant for...

I would surely rather buy the clear Death Star than the opaque one: Put LEDs inside, paint it and then scratch tiny holes in the paint to light these up. If they release a clear ISD or Super Star Destroyer, I would be quite happy.

I seem to recall the Ye prototypes were silver? But this was painted as well IIRC. Maybe you could show the MIG during a repint, after the grey was stripped to bare metal?

Nice build so far. I once started the YB-49 and was not impressed by the detail at all - especially the blanked off inlets spoil the look. At some point I decided to ignore this and glued the fuselage together... Bad decission. It landed on the over crowded shelf of doom. One day I will try to rip it apart and improve it the way you do.

Too bad Tamiya did not continue with a new P-47N... Back to the P-38 - are these 300 gal tanks??? Rene

They have some more Soviet space hardware kits - but all in 1:35... Strange scale for the topic

The build up kit looks like Hasegawa kit with Daco parts. Quite interesting.

Wow - thanks for posting this.

Will you detail the cockpit? I did not yet start as I was considering to show it canopy open... No one makes my life as hard as myself... I seem to recall a build report in some model magazine. I will try to find out which and when. Then there was a replacement decal set by Rising Decals including colour guide (wood colour prop, NMF cowling and panels aft the engine, rest aluminium dope and black). I also got me a Quick Boost replacement engine as a start.

Great build - thanks!

Oh great - have this as well. Will follow with interest

A maroon E-Type Series 2 coupe on my way to work this morning and a very nice, early Series 1 model last week on a trailer. Yummy...