Today was a day of getting back into the F-82 build after yesterday's outing. I have to say my boating experience was a bit more pleasant than some of the decaling process I am doing today. However, before that I did get a panel line wash in place which went fairly well. The gloss coat was applied the other day, so I was able to do the panel line wash first thing this morning. After it had dried for a while (oil paint and odorless white spirits mix), I wiped off the excess and then later today, decided to do decaling next.

This is where things started to go south a bit. The first thing I had to contend with was the tail decals. Supposedly, these decals are made for the Monogram F-82 kit which I have been lead to believe is the same plastic as the Hobbycraft kit I have. Perhaps the plastic is the same and then again perhaps it's not. Or perhaps the decals were not sized correctly in the first place.

But an additional challenge was the inside decal for the vertical stabilizer. It was designed to be added to the model before installing the horizontal stabilizer, but the fit of the parts precluded any thought of doing that. So I cut the decal along upper and lower sections to try and piece it together around the horizontal stabilizer.

When I went to place the split decals onto the fuselage, I found out that the slot on the inside decal was too high on the decal. So I had to cut the excess off the bottom side (under the horizontal stabilizer) and move it to the top side. Even then, there are some gaps showing that will have to be touched up later with paint. Repositioning the decal would not work because everything else would have been off. As is, there are other areas that have no decal coverage, again requiring touch up later.

And a mistake of my own making, fortunately I was able to recover from. The aftermarket decals have stars and bars for two different aircraft. One set has the normal blue surround while the other does not, only having the white and red. The one lacking the blue surround is intended for the night fighter. I didn't realize this until after I had already added the blue surrounded star to the upper wing. Fortunately, I was able to get the decal off and add the correct one.

So I will continue decaling tonight and tomorrow. Afterwards, I am going to apply a protective clear coat (matte probably) and then return to oil paint weathering.

Update: I was mistaken about the relationship between this model and the Monogram kit. They are not related and it is no wonder that the decals do not fit. So the issues with decals are of my own doing.

Yeah, I just looked at it as well. I must have missed that somehow. I did look, but maybe I got confused because if you expand the scalemates history it shows all F-82 models in the same time frame and scale. But that does mean that the decals are all my mistake. Ah well, I guess, this old dude is not as sharp as he used to be. 🙂

As long as I can match the blue on the decals, all should be okay. Thanks George (@gblair). There's only the bottom decals and a few smaller ones on top, plus a white stripe to do for the markings. Then I can move on to the next tasks.

This tough decal session makes you certainly think back to that wonderful outage, Carl @clipper
Despite the challenge they will turn out wonderful after a bit of cleaning up.

Thanks for this great building thread, Carl @clipper
I loved following it.
Nice to see this beauty in the headlines.

Congratulations, my friend @clipper!
What a fantastic result out of that challenging kit!
Looks awesome at the headlines!