The Little World

The business of painting insignia on full-size aircraft must be fun. Obviously a stencil situation and I’ll bet the paint crew are all frustrated car customisers. It explains some of the commemorative schemes that appear on service planes.

I’ve seen it done by a number of people and they all say that it has great advantages for weathered looks. I don’t pursue those myself, but I do appreciate the ability to get an insignia that does not appear on the kit decal sheet…without paying out another $ 30 for aftermarket markings. In the case of markings for my 40-year-old free baggie kits I am not going to buy anything if I can help it.

But I may be tempted to purchase a special tool in the future. I do RAF, RAAF, and RCAF planes with the occasional French or Israeli one thrown in. They all have round insignia of some form. I believe one can buy precise circle cutting compasses that can cut masking tape in small sizes. 28mm diameter is all that would ever be needed.

Come to think of it, some adaptation of a classic pair of small drafting compasses using scalpel or cutter blades may be possible. I own several sets of antique drafting instruments – I use their bow pens for canopy painting – so there is the raw material for experimentation.

But back to the Curtiss. As it was used for fighter training of the Royal Norwegian Air Force at Lake Ontario in Canada with a distinctive green colour scheme and Norwegian markings, I am in luck, These were flat panels and stripes on wing and rudder in Norwegian national colours; red with narrow white and blue. I have masked for them and will use thinned acrylics under low pressure to paint them on.

The joy of it all is that there were colour pictures as well as black and white taken for publicity purposes at the time – most answers you need to know are right there on Google.