I need some help on making or having some custom decals made for an F-16 that I am working on. If you have any ideas or things that I will be able to do the help would be much appreciated. The jet will be modeled after a 61st Fighter Squadron jet, based at Luke AFB AZ.
You need to start with good quality, close up photos of the various markings on the full scale bird. Basic marks such as stars, tail codes, numbers, etc can be used from the kit or readily available aftermarket sheets. Anything unique to that squadron/wing or to the particular aircraft will need to be photographed up close and as square as possible.
Take the photos and run them through one of the computer photo editing programs and resize them until they print on standard paper to the required size. Micro Mark has blank decal paper that works in ink jet printers and another version for laser printers. It is fairly expensive, so you want to have it right the first time. You might want to put together decals for several models on one sheet to get the maximum use of it. I don’t think the sheets can go through the printer more than once.
There are several custom decal makers around, but they are usually quite expensive. Sometimes they advertise in the model magazines and sometimes you just have get their names, addresses by word of mouth.
Darwin, O.F. [alien]
I’ve actually tried printing stuff on the micromark paper twice. I started out using the top, after cutting out the decals, I recut the top to get a straight edge so I can treat it as a new piece of paper again. Of course, you can only do that up to a certain point.
Also, they have white & clear. i found the clear to be almost unusable as no matter what color you print on it, its not going to be opaque. So you have to plan you decal colors vs background color very well. In general, the white paper will work much better but with the obvious disadvantage if you have decals will clear ‘holes’ in the graphics. But if its not too complicated, I would just cut out those spaces.
Finally, you have to spray the stuff with a sealer and let it try before using it or the ink will run. Alternatively, you can use laser paper and have commerical printing places copy it for you (like Kinko or Staples)
Rather than running the whole sheet through the printer twice, I have cut the sheet in half or even quarters. Then you have to define a custom sheet size to your print program. Be sure to test this definition on scrap paper to be sure the orientation is right.
Good luck
Dick
You might want to check this site out: http://www.beldecal.com/
They have Decal Paper that is cheaper than you can find anywhere else, plus they have tips on how to print decals on their decal paper.