Dennis_C

Continuing to try fixing decals issues: Quite okay with the yellow band. Also after couple more coats of red diluted with creamy yellow I think I got closer to the decal colour. Probably not worth trying more. I will also grease the tail area with touch of smokey weathering which will hopefully mask some paint mismatch. As you can see I also attached the stabiliser. A fiddly construction I should report!!!

Stencils would go fine. Letter codes too. For opacity - I have an understanding that this is just not consistent. For example white colour on Israeli markings and white colour on squadron cocards seem to be different. On squadron cocards it looks denser. But large colourful decals... Seems Special Hobby just saved some Krones on printing good paint layer. Maybe it's not the weakness of the technology.

@Lightningboy2000 yeah I posted to my Streak thread. Final result not good at all... I'm planning to repaint at least the tail stripe. Next time I just know I should paint such complex surfaces and forget about this Eduard crap. Stencils and simple decals work okay. But that works okay with almost every decal...

Hi folks, I finished my super-duper Eduard peel-off decals on my Thunderstreak and my general conclusion - look for aftermarket replacements or just paint what you need whenever possible. Problems: - VERY poor opacity. Just totally poor. It looks fine on overall metal aircraft but should you try to apply roundels to a camouflaged aircraft - it will not work. Also if you apply roundels to something like EDSG - your red will likely disappear. And I do not speak about white. - They are too thin. On complex surfaces they disintegrate into super small pieces. No chance to restore. Like zero. - film might be a problem. In some cases it just starts to peel off unintentionally and of course with pieces of paint. - some decals do not fit to shape. That is not uncommon problem though but here it is aggravated by bad opacity and thinness. Again on my Streak decals worked fine in 95% of cases. But in 5% that is just a disaster. So hope Eduard and Special Hobby stop the stupid experiment and return to normal decals.

Well... I've done it. In general I can say that these new "Eduard-peel-it-off" decals could be worked fine. Stencils and smaller elements that are transferred to flat surfaces do not pose that big problems. But some decals ended up in a disaster: First of all this. Tail tube red stripe. On the photo it is after some intensive care measures applied. Basically overpainted with red colour. This decal just disintegrated. It did not match the shape. Too wide, and Special Hobby made it with two cutouts which obviously did not work. Film self-peeled off the decal in course of application taking some colour with it of course. The result is still bad because red colour from the jar just did not match. I'll try mixing with grey to make it more dull and try to cover see through effect because red colour has poor opacity. Second this: I think I placed this stripe to the correct position so that cutout matches with the dorsal fin light. Also it looks correct compared to the available photoes. And if moved further back there would be just no space for the David Star. But... unfortunately this decal turned out to be too short. I plan to maybe cut piece of yellow stripes for other variants to close the gap and paintbrush black sides... On top fuselage there is also a small imperfection which I would probably just overpaint. Last thing - opacity is VERY poor. Look at the beige decal on the tail that was supposed to represent overpainted French Tricolor. No comments I'm thinking if I should consider that as a feature rather than a bug or overpaint with similar grey...

Thank you @jovapad ! I plan to fully complete this bird on the weekend. One big thing remains - scratching the pitot tube and inserting it to the airflow splitter in the intake. Super-finely-careful hole drilling is the challenge here to make sure a thin pitot tube holds there finely.

That is a superb news!!! (not for my wallet and stash space)

One thing I just figured out - hold on, where are the Musketeer identification stripes for the wings in Special Hobby decals set??? No decals, no mentioning to paint it. I understand consistency of identification marks application was not always on par. But there is enough French Streaks photoes with stripes on wing. Hmmmm.... I also know that there are only two poor photoes of the machines in Israeli markings - both are made from the side so hard to say if the stripes are there on the wing. Well... okay... let's think these were not really applied to the machines located in Israel. But that is quite unfortunate miss by Special Hobby. At least these should be available as optional decals or mentioned as option to paint.

I examined the decals applied last week and yes looks like they do tend to detach in some difficult places such as wing trailing edge. A drop of Mr.Softer seems welded it back reliably. And yes I feel if I wait too much Mr.Softer would just destroy the paint. Huh... Special Hobby kits are becoming problematic with these decals! I do not need that much Eduard kits though but Special Hobby makes a lot of what is in my area of interest! Hopefully there will always be some aftermarket sheets with nicer decal options...

Yeah... I've no idea why Eduard and Special Hobby would decide to change for such weird decal type. There is plenty of fine decalmakers around. Techmod used by Sword is very good. I think this is Polish firm. There were AVIprint decals in MPM kits before. Nothing to complaint about either. And I can understand why these new decals would peel off - because there is no glue between film and paint. Also the fact they detach from paper like in half-second also suggests there is no glue. Should I try peeling off the stuff? Or give a good solvent run?

It seems like the Wasp kit arrived to big H but was sold out immediately. A small number of Scouts is still in stock I hope LF has more in stock.

Very true. The only time I found decal stencils fully matching photoes was with Kinetic 1/72 Sufa. Exactly the same inscriptions as on a walkaround photoes of real F-16I in active service.

That makes me worried! How much time passed after you applied them? I do have a suspicion that the 'removable film' may self-remove eventually. And final coat will not hold it in place. Is one week enough to understand how the film will behave? At the same time I did try to remove film after 24-48 hours after application and that did not work at all.

It is. I think the problem is in insufficient colour opacity. On the paper the colour is better.

After you wrote it I started to look through old photoes - at least for 1ère escadre de chasse of French Air Force. It looks like stencilling was actually modified quite a lot during the life cycle of the Streaks. Some Streaks have this triangle, some not, some have this on starboard too. Some airframes have painted contour of some hatches in front of the wing - not only above the wing. Not sure what about USAF though. Bit I suspect red triangle became standard only somewhere in mid 50s so maybe references to old photoes are needed otherwise it's up to modellers artistic license BTW many Thunderjets would not have red triangles either!

Some time with thin brush and aluminium paint... HVARs are for F-84F, Bombs are for F-84G. Light grey and olive drab were airbrushed before. Yellow stripes on bombs are from Tamiya decal sheet. Worked really fine! I also drilled rockets' tails to represent exhaust pipes.

Eastern Express Il-96 was maybe one of their first models 20+ years ago. So yes it was also quite a simple kit. Il-96 especially in plane #1 livery will sell very well in Russia in toy and hobby shops even if the kit does not have super details.

I wrote some words here. Let me know if you have more specific questions.

I think Ark Models mainly repacks Frog kits (I think those that were produced in Donetsk in late Soviet times). They have some non-Frog kits but these are not high quality either. So I would not expect Zvezda or more recent Eastern Express quality here.

Thunderjet is getting its undercarriage. Some dry fitting was required but not much troubles inserting struts into slots in resin gear bays. Looks quite fiddly but everything holds firmly. Nice job from Aires, Tamiya and a little from myself Here is how the T'jet looks like today: I painted olive drab area with mix of matt and satin finish. Did not want to make it fully matt but also wanted to have contrast between glossy aluminium and olive drab antiglare paint. Some things still need to be added: lamps on fuel tank tips, pitot tube, some undercarriage doors. If I do all that today - might be a gloss finish session tomorrow.

I suspect it might be just instruction to paint the rear canopy.

I think main problems are electricity and military draft of key employees. If you have people and electricity to design and produce kits - shipping and logistics are less of the problem. It also heavily depends in which part of Ukraine your business is. If you're in Dnipro or Odesa - there are bombings and logistics is more difficult. If you're in Kharkiv - it's almost impossible to work. But if your business is to the west of Kyiv - logistics and bombings are not that of an issue but people and electricity are.

All looks logical now. Thank you guys! I wonder how many sprues were bought by AZ if they plan even more boxes with mods for different versions.

Well... couple decalling sessions are done. 76 decals applied yes - I counted them! What can I tell you? - I did not manage to remove film from these new style fancy Eduard decals. Film just sticks so firmly. I tried in couple invisible places but it's more likely to remove it together with all the paint. - At the same time film carrier is super thin and invisible so honestly I see zero reason why I should even try to remove it. - Small stencils transfer with no problems at all. - Bigger decals are a little more demanding though. When they get to the plastic - it's quite hard to move them around. Especially that was the case with letter codes. I would suggest to actually cut it into separate letters as it would be much easier to move the decal to the right position. - Decals fit to shape excellently except for the letter codes again. They go to the curved surface while the decal is a correct rectangle. This resulted in number '1' being slightly inclined. 'NX' are aligned with panel lines but unfortunately I could not do that with the number. So another reason to cut this decal apart. - Decals stick quite quickly so make sure you place decals to the right position quickly. - One not very good thing - paint layer seems not dense enough. You can see it on the nose ring. There is small overlap of decals parts and it shows up. - At the same time decals are super stretchy and flexible. Here the decal is bent at 90 degree and it did not crack at all. Very nice. Tamiya decal would fall into approximately 10 parts here. Also you can see on this photo how decal drowned into all the recesses. No solvent used! Overall conclusion - these are very good decals. Maybe a little lacking in opacity. But the speed and simplicity of application is very nice. And I do not think you should even try to remove film. A little more work to be done yet. I'm a little concerned how I manage those huge decals for the tail...

We need Czech speakers here. Google Translate translates 'pěkných výlisků' as 'nice moldings' into various languages. Not 'nice sprues'. So I still feel that AZ might have bought exactly moldings. But let's see. Regarding AMK activity. Maybe they still alive but their Kfir in 1/72 is very rare in the shops now. Delfin looks more findable. In 1/48 they released Mi-8 kit in 2022. That is the most resent new kit release.