CaracalModels

Looks beautiful - and I agree, the C-97 & B-50 were truly impressive airframes. Thanks for sharing your excellent build!

Beautiful! This is a difficult scheme to pull off, and you have done a great job. Thanks for sharing!

Beautiful work - thanks for sharing!

Looking really good. I have good memories of designing this sheet and learned a great deal from the experience, so I have always been a bit sad to see that very few people took on the challenge of using it. I only saw a handful of excellent builds; an I am looking forward to seeing your project completed.

Excellent!

Simply beautiful - thanks for sharing!

I will get the 72nd scale ANG sheet reprinted in the next 2-3 months.

It looks great!

Thank you for your kind words - and if the decals are any good, they are good because people like you gave me a lot of feedback (and criticism) through the years. If was designing this sheet today I would definitely have added the outline markings: it's not like there is no space on the sheet and the design work was already done. As I mentioned, I do not remember the design decision at the time. It might well be that the few Belgian jets I looked at all happened to have the white-backed markings. PS: I am afraid I could not see any European airshows in the 1980s - I really wanted to, but I was just a primary school student growing up in Turkey. I came very close to seeing one, though. When I finally was able to spend a summer with my uncle's family in Germany, I begged my older cousin to please drive me to an airshow only 40km. away on my birthday. The TV announcements looked extremely exciting, and it would have been a great birthday gift for a plane-crazy pre-teen. My cousin was too lazy to drive me to the airshow and preferred to spend the day hanging out with this friends. I was really sad the whole day - until the TV started showing what I had just missed.

Note that there are many photos showing SEA-camouflaged Belgian Alpha Jets with the white-backed ejection seat warnings; which leads me to believe that both styles were in use, especially during the early 1990s. I remember spending a lot of time to get the stencilling right during the design, but unfortunately I don't remember the exact reasoning behind the design decision. I would not have chosen AT15 unless there was a photo with white-backed markings, but I can't find it at the moment. At this scale and size the marking you are looking for is practically nothing but the same marking on the sheet without the white background. If you think getting it custom printed is worth the cost and effort despite the photographic evidence for use of both styles, I can generate an artwork file for you. Some of the very same airframes with the toned-down version:

There were many other schemes and one-off oddities. I am not by any means a RAAF Mirage expert - but Messiers Mason & Dottram (the authors of the Mirage IIIO book) are; and this scheme may be mentioned somewhere in the book. The decal sheets were completely based on the info in the book and the extensive photo collection of the Oz defense ministry.

Absolutely great looking build!

Excellent build - thanks for sharing! I can confirm that the guy who designed the decals forgot to put the national insignia in the camouflage drawing on the instruction sheet 🙂

Looks great - we don't see a CV-22B built very often, and an excellent build, too. Thanks for sharing.

Caracal CD48225 has markings for one Lakenheath based aircraft. There is hardly anything that needs to be done for existing, accurately scaled decals to "fit" the Tamiya kit; with the exception of some stencilling that needs to exactly conform to the panels. And these can be sourced from the kit sheet.

Very nice - looking forward to seeing your B-1B build as well!

Beautiful work - I really like the titanium finish. Thanks for sharing!

Beautiful! Thanks for sharing, and I really enjoyed following the build feature.

Another excellent build - thanks for sharing!

I just saw this - really great looking B-1B there. Thanks for sharing! Looking forward to see your B-36 too (hint, hint).

Simply beautiful!

Excellent work! Thanks for sharing, and I hope you enjoyed using the decals.

Excellent work, as always! In case you are running out of project ideas, I have a Vietnam B-57 sheet on the way for release shortly before the New Year.

Beautiful - I always thought the B-45 was one of the most interesting early jets.

Simply excellent - the F-105G was one of the best looking Century Series jets. Thanks for sharing!