@michaelt:

Yes, I know all about that airplane, since it was at Chino for many, many years before Paul Allen bought it in 2000 (and made Ed Maloney a millionaire). There's an interesting story about that airplane and how he obtained it:

In 1955, they were closing down the Glendale Grand Central Airport here, to make way for the Interstate 5 freeway. There was a mechanics school at the airport, with several "instructional airframes." Ed was already well-known in Southern California aviation for his attempts to obtain warbird airplanes for the museum he wanted to create, so the school called him and said if he could take the instructional airframes away, they were his for the taking. Ed organized trucks through friends and went to get the airplanes. They were: the A6M5 Zero that has flown at the museum since it was restored in 1977, the P-51A that was restored for flight in 1978, and the Me-262A. Ed always wanted to restore the 262 for flight, since its main spar had not been cut by the Air Force when they released it to the school. As Ed told me, the recon nose parts had been misplaced over the years, so he used the "fighter nose" he got from North American (they had knocked down a 262 to get the slats and the horizontal stabilizer control which they used on the prototype Sabre).

Dragon:
Just painted a motto on the nose of the Me 262A-1a/U4.
The US 54th Air Disarmament squadron was tasked with locating advanced German aircraft and when they found one of interest and in flyable condition, they tagged it on the right side of the nose with, what is evidently stenciled on, "Feudin' 54th A.D. Sq.".
I've not seen any decal sets that include this, so I had to hand paint it on.
It looks a little rough in the photos but not to bad 1:1.

2 attached images. Click to enlarge.

You must have a real steady hand, Michael.
Looks great.

Looking good Michael @michaelt!

I'm doing the Trimaster (later Dragon) U2 "bomber nose". Boy, after doing that nice HB kit, this thing is "rugged." Hard to believe that 30 years ago these were "state of the art." Lots of Mr Surfacer to get things right. If I do a U4, I will definitely do the HB kit.

But you certainly have a great result here @michaelt. I like your ability to handpaint names and such in 1/48.

G'day Tom (@tcinla) and Louis (@lgardner),

I was worried about getting the font right, particularly for the 'F', which I couldn't find a clear picture of.

As it was, I got this pretty right first go, but I think the font size increased a little as I went on - particularly the 'th'. Letters also slant slightly to the left as you go to the right.

Still, I'm very happy with it and got it done in one go (with a few minor scrapes of the knife and touch ups required).

What I did was mask a boundary with tape - 20mm by 4mm - so that I could keep a level and size.

I then expanded this to 20mm by 8mm to paint the second row.

The head profile on the other side required a couple of goes to get an acceptable result.

Hobby Boss: This the best I could do with my old, cheap, airbrush. I couldn't get it to spray as fine as I wanted (0.3mm needle) and it frequently spat paint.

1 attached image. Click to enlarge.