The Little World

I do my own decals in an inkjet printer for many of the 1:72 aircraft I build.

It’s not that I am contemptuous of the commercial maker’s decals – far from it. I love Cartograf and other fine printing companies for they ability to make a good decal with thin carrier film and good moulding qualities.

The decal printers who make super-tough carrier that just will not soften of conform are a pain, but the cheapjohns who barely put any film on in the first place are even worse. You can expect their designs to fragment as soon as you try to apply them. I’ve learned not to fully trust some Eastern European printers – I now routinely overcoat their sheets with clear acrylic to preserve the fragile little things. And I give them double the release time of regular decals.

The home-prints are to supply insignia or unit markings that will never be seen on any commercial sheet. Or to supply a single plane economically instead of buying a set of transfers that will sit mostly unused after one go. To this end I’ve purchased sheets of paper from Dr. Decal and Mr Hyde in Sydney. It’s good stuff and prints well. But…

But designing your own work is a long process. I can see why people scan and copy for the main insignia and for badges. I can do this too, though I have also figured out on Photoshop Elements how to make roundels and insignia myself. Even stars are not hard, though my Arabic script writing is rather crude. The real bug-bear is letters and numbers.

The main PSE font set is only a partial help – many of the standard letter and number fonts we see on RAF, USAF, and other air forces are not directly represented. I’ve found work-rounds though, and happened upon a font on the internet that is perfect for later RAF Squadron and plane codes. It’s called RAF_PW_ATH Regular and will produce accurate side codes. It is buggy, however, and if you forget and press the shift key it will crash. Never a good thing with aircraft…

For older RAF and RCAF codes Bank Gothic Medium is fine if you reduce the width about 30%.

The USAAF and USN block lettering is more difficult – I have gone to Stencil Std Bold but you have to fill in the bars in the letters. There is probably a ready-made font for this but I’ve not encountered it yet.

As far as civilian lettering, you are on your own – the scan and copy route is probably best until someone brings out a free font book for aviation.

Addendum: I wrote this some time ago and have since found fonts for the RCAF, USAF, and US Navy on the net. A modeller who was making larger scale flying aircraft drafted them out and made them free for use. I can do buzz codes and civil registrations too.