Good afternoon gents.
I spent most of yesterday applying the
decals. The airframe
decals were from Two Bobs (printed by Microscale) and mostly went down beautifully. They were incredibly thin with little carrier film, although a couple of them folded over and were impossible to get straight again. Luckily the sheet came with markings for 4 aircraft so I was able to swap out some other
decals, albeit not always the right colour.
I used the kit
decals for the ACMI & AN/ALQ-188 pods and the AIM-9. However, as the kit instructions don't include the AIM-120's (even though they are on the sprue) they also didn't have any
decals on the kit sheet. Luckily I had some Meng (Cartograf)
decals left over from my F-35B build so used those. In retrospect I could have used the Meng AIM-120's from my spares box, but at this stage I didn't want to get back to gluing/sanding/painting and the Meng versions were only a little better than
Tamiya's.
I also used the UMP decal softeners for the first time and I'm very please with them. I used the normal and strong solutions, and the
decals pulled down into every panel line and rivet. I think the ultra strong might even be able to tame thick
Tamiya decals.