Shackleton MR3 Progress - Decals?

[Darius at home]

The Sanger kit comes with a large decal sheet but this appears to be for an MR1 and the serials for the MR3 are absent. The decal quality is a bit ragged but the yellow wing walk stripes are good.

So what to do? Shackleton MR3 serials were in bright red with white outlines to the letters and numbers. I have sets of white numbers and letters of the appropriate sizes in the decal stash but getting red decal letters and numbers of the correct size to fit within the white outline would be impossible.

The solution was to scan the white decal letter/number sheets (using a newly acquired scanner/inkjet printer/copier).

- Crop each individual letter and number using photoshop.

- Export each individual letter and number into Windows Paint.

- Enlarge the image by 500% (using the stretch/skew function) - this helps to avoid pixilated curves when the image size is reduced for printing.

- In Paint draw an outline of the letter/number and offset the outline inwards to form the outline of the red infill letter/number.

- Save each red letter/number as a jpeg image file.

- In MS Word set at 114% - approximately full size on my computer screen (other screens may need a different image size %) insert the original scanned white letters/numbers into individual "text boxes" (from the draw menu) .

- Resize these to full size (measured on the screen!!!).

- Insert the red infill letters/numbers in individual text boxes.

- Align them next to the white letters/numbers and reduce their size so that they are slightly smaller - horizontal lines from the "draw" menu help keep all the letters in alignment.

- Test print on plain paper.

- If OK print onto clear decal paper for Inkjets (I used Experts Choice).

- Coat with Microscale liquid decal film.

I am sure that there is a more sophisticated and efficient method to achieve the above result but being a 40+ civil engineering dinosaur this is the best that I could come up with.

It also helps to choose a serial code with repeating letters and numbers and to have plenty of beer handy.

The result - the most expensive decal sheet that I have aquired to date!!!!

:unsure:

Darius

[Koen L]

Well the decals look great! Can't wait to see them on the Shackleton.

[KursadA]

Darius, if you expect to be doing this kind of work often, you might want to invest in Corel Draw. You will use a lot of time, and the time you will save could then be used to build even more vacforms to blow our minds away.

Using the True Type RAF serial fonts available on the Web and the contour feature of Corel Draw, preparing these decals would have taken less than 45 seconds. Just a friendly suggestion for a very flexible and useful modeling tool.

Edited May 2, 2005 by KursadA

[Darius at home]

Thanks Kursad - I knew there had to be a more effective way of doing this.

:P

Darius