MikeC

Hi Marvin, welcome aboard.

What Kevin said.  Plus there's a fair chance that the markings under said masks - which of course will not benefit from the clear coat - will end up with a different sheen, and thus you'll negate one of the very reasons we paint markings in the first place.

Hi Jens,

Great job Max. 👍

Good recovery Max, hang in there.

On 10/1/2020 at 7:30 PM, BlueNosers352nd said:

The issue I see for me it transferring and getting the right things to stick.  Did a little test before with Stars/Bars and that was entertaining.

I found the same thing, but I'm now finding that like most things it gets easier and better with practice and growing confidence.

My Portrait 3 can do 4" lettering in 1/32, so 0.13", which is also a 6" serial in 1:48.  Have a look at a test spray towards the end of this post, in particularly the "Royal Navy" legend and see what you think.

https://forum.largescaleplanes.com/index.php?/topic/90601-p-51d-5na/&do=findComment&comment=1300034

Hello and . It is certainly fun, and you have the satisfaction of creating a model that is probably unique.

Hi Oscar, .  It's quiet here, but we are a friendly bunch.

12 hours ago, GeneK said:

P.S. I'm enjoying this thread, so thanks ... could you post your attachments at a higher resolution, please, so I can more fully appreciate your work?

Thank you Gene, glad you're enjoying it.  I'll have a look at doing that, but I'm not sure how, so bear with me while I work that out.

The following may seem off-topic and a bit of a long story, but please bear with me.  However, for the more sensitive mask-users among us please note that it contains several references to "the 'D' Word"

More years ago than I care to remember, in the late 1960s, my local model shop where I grew up carried a small stock of aftermarket decals: most of them were aimed at the flying model fraternity, but there were a few sheets that suited 1/72 model aeroplanes.  I soon discovered the joys of going off-piste and doing a subject not in the box - or more usually the Airfix bag.  A bit later I discovered Modeldecals, sold by Modeltoys in Portsmouth.  Much later I found myself moving to Portsmouth for work, and Modeltoys was my local hobby shop.  Aftermarket decal heaven!

Fast forward many years, and I was occasionally venturing into the box subjects if I fancied said subject, but generally I still liked to know that I had made a model that was a bit different.  The drawback was, of course, that anyone else who had bought the same aftermarket sheet may have picked the same subject.  So coming up to date, having got into making my own masks, it feels good to know that I can make what is likely to be a truly unique model.  For me that is a small part of enjoying my hobby (although I dread to think what it says to a psychologist about my ego).

Whilst I do not claim a fully comprehensive knowledge of every decal sheet ever released, I was pretty sure that "The Comet" had never been done in a decal sheet.  So I designed and cut my masks, as seen above, and then, recently, I stumbled across THIS! https://www.eduard.com/out/media/D32013.pdf

Yes, it has "The Comet" on it!  This has given me a dilemma.  To abandon this subject and find another truly unique one: perhaps "Duchess of Manhattan" from the 361st, my reserve subject.  It does not tick the box of a lesser-known fighter group, but in all other respects is interesting, and I don't know of any decals for it.   The other option is to carry on and not waste the work I've done so far.

So that's where I am at the moment.  It's interesting that Eduard's interpretation has the name and artwork on both sides of the nose.  I don't have or know of any photos of the starboard side nose.  Looking at the design of the wording and the artwork, it just looks wrong to me to have the art going "backwards" on the aeroplane.  But the "THE" seems designed to accommodate the comet artwork, so putting it in front on the starboard side would also seem not quite right.  So my interpretation was, and still is, to put the nose art on the port side only. 

But I think I'll stick with "The Comet".  After all, the Eduard sheet also has a couple of 20th FG birds, a Blue-Nosed Bodney resident and "Lou IV", so I suspect "The Comet" will be the least popular.  In any case, I will know I did it with masks.  At the moment I'm still working on the cockpit interior, so another post here may be some time.  But until I do, thanks for staying with me and reading my ramblings.

This is looking really good.

Nicely done, in particular a superb Pony.

That looks really good, well done. 

What a contrast between the two incarnations.  Great work.

A great idea, nicely executed.   

I'm a bit late catching up, but hi Steve, good to see you here.

Here's the plain - no checks - nose band, cut into paper and tested against the model.  It's not perfect, but good enough: I can make any minor adjustments at the painting stage.

As that's OK, I'll call a halt on the masking work for now, and actually get on with building something to put them on.  More in due course; thanks for the interest and encouragement.

The nose bands were started as a trace off the kit decals, and this quickly proved a non-starter for various reasons, so I bit the bullet and started from scratch.

I taped a piece of paper around the nose, making sure that it conformed to the curves without creasing in the nose band area, drew the edges, and scanned it, noting the top edge to avoid confusion later.

Then used the trace software to draw it out

Then:

- refined it;

- cut it on paper;

- tried it on the model;

- repeat until satisfied - which is not yet, although I'm getting there.

Yes, well spotted, it is only half a nose-band: once I've got one half right, I can just mirror it.

7 minutes ago, Mathduv said:

There are a lot of mustang scheme that never made it to decals manufacturer, and it's great to see them build.

Yes, and I like something unusual, so I'm now in Eighth AF Enthusiast Heaven!

Thanks Gents.  Although for full disclosure I should mention that I've used drawing software before, not least Powerpoint (now-fading memories of work!!!) and even dabbled in a CAD package (again, that was for work), so it's more getting used to the particular wrinkles of the Silhouette software than coming at it ab initio.

The comet started life as two concentric circles, seen here before final alignment. 

The tail was then drawn by eye using the polygon tool, with the outer edges as tangents to the inner circle.

I used the eraser to get rid of unwanted lines, then grouped it all and added a box.

So let's start with the nose art.  It's really all done by eyeball estimation, base on the datum that the panel it will sit on is about 0.22" high.  I started with the name, "The Comet".  "Comet" was started using the text tool again, with a font called "Stencil Gothic BE" which comes with Windows 10.  This is not exactly the same, in that the "T" is solid in the font, and needs a cutout. 

So with apologies to those for whom this is old hat (this software is still a journey of discovery for me):  a word created in the text tool can be  ungrouped to edit individual letters.  So it was a simple matter to magnify the "T", use the eraser tool to make the cut-out, extend the lines on the horizontal and vertical bars to make each a complete rectangle, then group them to make the letter.  Then I made sure the letters were the same size, aligned and grouped them.

"The" started off in the text tool in Arial font.  After ungrouping, the H and E were reduced to about half the height, then the fun began.  Using the point edit tool on each letter in turn, I got them to about the right shape; then drew three straight lines to check the alignment and adjusted accordingly.

To ensure the lines were parallel I simply drew the first one, then used the duplicate function.

Then it was simply a case of drawing two small circles, size and group everything up, draw a box round it all, et voila:

I tend to group in stages: so as we saw, the letter of "The" were grouped, as were those for "COMET" Then the dots at each end were grouped; then add "THE"; finally, group that plus the box.

Next, the comet itself.

To start with, a confession: I'll be using some small decals for the six kill markings, as I'm not that confident about cutting things that small.

The lettering and numbering was simple enough: I produced them in the text tool using a font called USAAC Code, which a fellow IPMS branch member pointed me at.  The serials are 8" high, and the codes 24".

(Incidentally, I make no apology for using Imperial units - I can use SI units equally well, but the original was measured in Imperial units, and I'm modelling it in a scale based on said units, so it makes life a lot easier.  I'll include metric conversions if there's a popular demand.)

The national markings will be done using dashotgun's file from this forum, and the invasion stripes will be masked the old-fashioned way with Tamiya tape. 

What I intend to deal with here are the nose art and the checks.

I'm doing a Revell P-51D-5 as part of a Group Build over on the Large Scale Planes forum https://forum.largescaleplanes.com/index.php?/topic/90601-p-51d-5na/

I specifically picked a subject, and a reserve, that I considered I would be able to do with masks.  My first choice is 44-13471, 6N*J, "The Comet" of the 505th FS, 339th FG, assigned to Capt Evan M. "Johnny" Johnson.  This has a name, a nose art I felt I could draw in the Silhouette software, red/white nose checks, and best of all (for me) full D-Day stripes.

I don't intend to repeat on here all I've posted there, but thought I could expand the masking-specific bits here for anyone who's interested.

My reserve is for the event that I fail to manage the nose checks, and has just a name: 44-13708, B7*I, "Duchess of Manhattan" of the 374th FS, 361st FG, Bottisham.  I have a certain fondness for Bottisham, I may even have to invest in a second kit and do that one!

So without further ado, here we go.