Why your worries about decal film may be overblown

[Weaver]

Seems like the decal film around your markings might actually be accurate these days:



From here (more pics): https://twitter.com/Twigs95/status/791932650223120384

[NARSES2]

Oh yes. Put a model of that in the competition complete with photo and watch the JMN's drive themselves crazy 

[Rheged]

Yes indeed!  A potential numpty-boggling exercise of some magnificence.

[zenrat]

So are we going to see a time when builds are marked down for NOT having visible film?

[TheChronicOne]

Cool!

The more one looks at pics of actual aircraft the more one realizes the haphazard nature of it all.

It gives me great comfort when I botch something... . .   

[zenrat]

What we need is for someone to paint a giant fingerprint across one of their aircraft...

Mrs z and I were watching Band of Brothers again a while ago and I was pleased to see in several close ups that the edges of the invasion stripes on the Dakotas were rough and you could see the brush strokes.

[TheChronicOne]

What we need is for someone to paint a giant fingerprint across one of their aircraft...

Mrs z and I were watching Band of Brothers again a while ago and I was pleased to see in several close ups that the edges of the invasion stripes on the Dakotas were rough and you could see the brush strokes.

What we need is for someone to paint a giant fingerprint across one of their aircraft...
hahaha!!! 


Band of Brothers is excellent, one of my favs..

[PR19_Kit]

Mrs z and I were watching Band of Brothers again a while ago and I was pleased to see in several close ups that the edges of the invasion stripes on the Dakotas were rough and you could see the brush strokes.

Somewhere there's a pic of a couple of ACs painting invasion stripes on the wings of a Spitfire IX, and they're using YARDBRUSHES!

This one isn't it, but it's close....

(I've just noticed there's no canopy on that Spit, maybe they were practicing on a time expired airframe?)

[Dizzyfugu]

I always wonder why "serios" modelers put so much effort into "clean" models. If you take a close look at almost any service vehicle, be it an aircraft, ship, tank, it has some "flaws" and inaccuracies, like surface repairs, exchange parts, or even simple errors. Might be personal taste, but many builds I see just look very toylike, in their clinical correctness. The Spitfire is just a great case - others are whitewash winter camouflages, or the German Hinterhalt scheme, which was frequently applied in the field with thinned color pastes on top of a single color background. Sometimes with a spraying device, but more frequently with brushes, rags, even bushels of grass, with a rather "handmade" finish.

Besides, I love such "inconsistencies" - they add a personal touch to a vehicle! 

[NARSES2]

Besides, I love such "inconsistencies" - they add a personal touch to a vehicle! 

Very much so 

D Day stripes are an interesting example of how things can differ because of circumstances. Different units obviously had, or allocated different amounts of time and or resources to it and it shows. One of the USAAF "Air Forces *" wasn't lined up to be used until day 2 and their stripes are particularly neat and tidy. Their sister AF on the other hand is a complete mix of "styles". I've often wondered if some units got more notification, official or otherwise, than others or just had more pedantic NCO's ? 

* I can't remember which and can't be bothered to go and look, sorry.

[Weaver]

Besides, I love such "inconsistencies" - they add a personal touch to a vehicle! 

Couldn't agree more. I've often done things like have camouflage demaraction lines 'jump' or even vanish as they cross onto a control surface, implying that the latter has been swapped from an aircraft with a slightly different pattern, or that it's a new one that's been painted in the base colour but not the 'overlay' colour.

I know I've told this story before, but my disenchantment with accuracy came years ago, when I looked a picture taken on a US carrier deck. There were about two dozen A-7 Corsairs in the pic and no two of them had exactly the same colour & markings scheme on the nose. Some had white radomes, some had unpainted GRP ones. Some anti-glare panels were short, others were long, some had rounded fronts, some had 'chopped off' fronts (i.e. at the radome line), some had hard edges, some had soft ones. Some aircraft had two ejection seat triangles, some had one, some had them underneath the canopy, some behind it, etc, etc....

The realisation that the people who own, fly and maintain the real aircraft don't care as much about 'accuracy' as modellers do shouldn't have been a profound revelation, but it was...

[Glenn Gilbertson]

Don't worry if you're not sure if the dihedral is exactly symmetrical:


(Heinkel HD 24, Ushuaia).