@Tim Marlow was wondering how I was going to do the overpainted 411. Well, a big trawl through my
decals turned up something:
The kit’s
decals at the top, an ancient sheet of Almark German aircraft
decals below them. Though they’re dark red and the real tank probably had black outlines, dark red is going to appear close to black in black-and-white photos, so to anybody who takes offense at them, I say: prove to me that they
weren’t dark red
First, I applied the 4 and the 1:
Followed by the 215, but with the digits cut apart, for two reasons. One is because they were spaced wider on the real tank than what you get from
Tamiya (likely because the kit numbers are fractionally too small as well), but the other reason is that this way, I could line up the 2 and the 5 with the 4 and the 1, which is much easier to do than the other way around:
Then I added the crosses on the hull sides and rear, as well as the other turret numbers:
The left and rear crosses are per photographs of the real tank, but those don’t show a cross on the right. However, one could be in the place where I put it, because that isn’t visible enough (or at all) in the existing photos, so again, it’s a logical place and it
could have been there.
The numbers were fun to apply over the vision flaps and their bolts … Lots of Micro Sol, and unlike what is always recommended when using that, I pressed firmly down on them between applications, using both a folded-up cloth and a blunt dental tool, to get them to go around the corners and details. Once they’re dry tomorrow, I may have to apply some more, we’ll see.