All looking great, George @gblair
A pity at the extra work you have to do but the repair lwill be doable.

Thanks, John (@j-healy), John (@johnb), and Spiros (@fiveten). Todqy is my birthday, so I get a nice lunch somewhere from my wife. I plan to stop at the hobby store on the way back and hopefully get some more Tamiya clear gloss. I hope to finish the decals today, except for the wing that needs the gloss reapplied. Cheers.

Happy birthday, George!

Hey George. Hope it's not too late to wish you a happy birthday as well. I feel your pain on the acrylic paint mishap. Definitely been there myself. If you want to really strip it down to the plastic for a partial repaint, I strongly recommend Windex as a solvent that will allow you to wipe away Tamiya paint easily with no residue or damage to plastic. It also works for Gunze. Not so sure about Vallejo, but probably. Windex is pleasant-smelling and doesn't seem so hard on the skin as alcohol. I use it to clean up spilled paint and to rinse paint brushes as well. Once acrylic paint is cured it usually stands up well to masking tape. I would mask up to a deep panel line to limit the area you want to strip and just wipe away all the paint to start over from a clean plastic surface. Just my two cents worth. The F-16 is looking great, BTW.

I got back to the F-16 today and, as usual, took one step forward and two steps back. I had applied most of the decals to the fuselage. I noticed that the decals that are on the lighter of the two gray colors on the plane appear to be almost the same color as the paint. I wanted to let them dry and see what they look like. When I checked the decals, I found the to be almost invisible. The color of the decals and the color of the paint are nearly identical. I think I can live with the invisible decals on the nose, but I wanted to be sure I could see the markings on the tail. I stripped the paint off the tail and then lightened the gray with a few drops of white and reapplied the paint to the tail. I just finished the clear gloss in preparation for the decals. I always let it dry for 24 hours before I apply decals. Tomorrow I hope to apply the final decals, which I will let dry for 24 hours before I apply the final clear flat. In the meantime, I am planning my model for the space group. Yeah!

4 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Good step to lighten the gray, my friend @gblair! Looking forward to how the decals will look.

Thanks, John (@johnb), Spiros (@fiveten), and Carl (@clipper). It wouldn't be one of my builds unless some minor (and sometimes major) problem occurs. I always hold my breath when I get to the decals because it is much harder to fix a problem that happens very late in the build. Nice work on the Hudson, Carl. What is next in the build queue?