Thanks for the info, Carl (@clipper). I will need to try airbrushing some primer. I have always thought primer was an unnecessary step, but now I am starting to wonder if I might need it with these new paints.

George (@gblair),

That last photo to the right with gentleman holding the evidence in hand. A brush 3 to 4 inches wide used to make the cuts or painting near lines and insigna's. Theatre of the absurd, painting with a 3 to 4 in scale brush. Say the most using the least is the way to go. I'm looking forward to your write up. When I think that it's all been said and done its neat
to see these little nuggets of truth that get over looked and now are being modeled.

Stripes do look really good, George @gblair
Pitty about the paint lifting.

I sprayed the plane with Tamiya Clear Gloss in preparation for the decals. I always let the clear dry at least 24 hours, so that is all for today. Cheers everyone.

1 attached image. Click to enlarge.

A nice clear coat, George @gblair

Looks real good. I see you're using a Paasche H, George @gblair. It's the DC -3 of airburshes! Reliable as heck.

I was looking forward to today, which was decal day. I noticed that this plane had a yellow leading edge on the wing, so I fired up the airbrush and painted the stripe. Then it was decal time. Up until this kit, I had never built an Eduard model before. Over the years, I had heard a lot of glowing reviews of the decals that come with Eduard kits. I decided to start with the larger decals, such as the roundels and squadron identification letters. The first thing I noticed is that the decals were rather thick. They looked more like the decals that came in the old Monogram and Revell kits. The next issue I had was that the first roundel stuck where it first landed, and refused to move. Luckily it was on the bottom of the wing and shouldn't be noticeable. I discovered that if I used water to wet the surface instead of MicroSet that the decal would be easy to move around. The next problem I had is these decals are translucent. It is a good thing that I left a white area for the roundel on both sides of the fuselage, because the yellow outside ring of the roundel easily shows the color contrasts underneath. After I had applied all of the decals for this session, I went back and applied MicroSol to all of the decals. After an hour, I went back to check the decals and discovered that the decals were not conforming to the details under them. This was especially true on the underwing roundels which sit on top of a small fairing. I tried pressing the decal down over the fairing, but it refused to conform. I then applied Tamiya MarkFit Strong to all the decals. This got most of the decals to settle into place, but the underwing decals still would not conform over the small fairing. I used a sharp Xacto blade to pierce both sides of the decal over the fairing and reapplied the MarkFit. Things looked better when I checked this evening, but I may need to apply something stronger tomorrow. I also had to replace the small red decals that form the red patches over the machine guns. The kit decals was very transparent and clearly showed the demarcation between the camo and the yellow leading edge. I had a pack of red stripe decals that were probably 50 years that I cut new patches from. These worked much better.

I think the decals will be fine, but they aren't what I was expecting. By the way, this plane has one kill marking just below the rear canopy. It turns out that one of the spotter pilots did shoot down a German fighter shortly after D-Day.

Cheers everyone.

7 attached images. Click to enlarge.