The British Spitfire is one of
the prettiest aircraft ever designed. Yeah
I said it. My issue is that the
color schemes tend to be on the boring side.
Lifelike
Decals’s latest re-release proves me
wrong yet again.
The decals are designed for the
Heller Mk. XVI and provides markings for four aircraft.
Three aircraft sport the Dark Green/ Ocean Grey/ Medium Sea Grey
camouflage. The other one is an
overall natural metal finished Spitfire. The
decals are beautifully printed with good register and color saturation.
They are provided on two sheets. The
bigger one contains the squadron codes, national insignia, and personal
markings. The smaller one has all
the black stencils for one complete aircraft.
Click on
images below to see larger images
The first aircraft belongs to
Sqdn. Ldr. Kacsmarek from the famous 302 Polish Squadron.
The aircraft sports the Polish emblem next to some nose art.
The cockpit side has more art work.
It is quite a unique look for the standard scheme.
Aircraft two belongs to New
Zealander W.O. Lind. The four part
spinner and the cockpit artwork makes this aircraft somewhat less than standard.
Aircraft three of the Royal
Auxillary AF is the most colorful of the ‘typical’ camouflaged aircraft. It was used in the Cooper Air Races in 1949.
The red spinner, yellow tail band with a black 6 on it, along with the
serial number under the wings makes this aircraft quite interesting.
The upper wing also sports a black 6 for the air race.
The last aircraft is a natural
metal finish aircraft from a gunnery school.
Just the uniqueness of a Spitfire in NMF makes this aircraft interesting. The aircraft is not a silver painted machine according to the
research. That should make life
interesting. The spinner and gun
covers are painted in red for a splash of color.
The instructions are on two 8 x
10 sheets. One has the left side
profiles and the stencil diagram. The
other sheet contains the research notes, as well as, the upper and lower plan
views. It also has the right side
profiles where they are other than standard.
Colorful aircraft, great decals
and excellent research, everything you could want in a decal sheet.
These sheets are typical of Lifelike quality. This is a limited re-release so get it while you can before it
goes out of print again.
Highly recommended
Thanks
to Lifelike for the review copies. You
can obtain your copy by visiting their website at http://www16.ocn.ne.jp/~lifelike/
. Make sure you tell them where you
heard about it. Buy with
confidence.
You can purchase these decals
either directly from Lifelike
Decals at fax number is
+81-3-5680-6733, and e-mail is lifelike@eos.ocn.ne.jp.
or from HobbyLink Japan.
Other shops that stock Life like
Decals are *Hannants/UK, *Mister Kit/Italy, *Revi (publisher)/Czech Republic, *SkyGrid/Canada,
*Roll Models/USA, *Great Models Webstore/USA, *FlightDecs/Canada,
*Victory Models/USA
*M & Models/USA, *Zed
Hobbies/Australia, *AB
&S Enterprise/Australia, *Desert Miniature/USA
Floyd
S. Werner, Jr.
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