Now with the
decals on:
I’m not sure whether to put a layer of matt varnish over everything. One the one hand, the
decals have a fair amount of shine from certain angles, on the other I’m afraid it will accentuate the carrier film that’s already visible around the larger markings, like the LCAC-43 at the front.
Some advice for anyone else building this kit, though: don’t use the
decals for the yellow and red stripes — paint and mask them like I did for the stripes on the deck. This will save you a lot a problems getting everything on correctly. The
decals are thin and fairly fragile, and especially the long, narrow ones are likely to break as you’re putting them onto the model.
On the positive side, they respond very well to Micro Sol, so that even the
decals that go on the heavily textured outsides of the ramps fit very nicely over all the detail.
For some reason also, Trumpeter provides 50% spares for many of the
decals. For example, there are three copies of the yellow vertical “CAUTION” marks near the back, but only two needed on the model, and fully twelve “AIR INLETS DO NOT COVER” when you only need eight … Pretty much only the stripe markings are provided exactly as many times as needed.
The kit also includes a lot of white markings to put on the skirt, but I don’t expect those
decals to hold very well, so I left them off. I may see about painting them on instead, but I’m not entirely sure I’ll try that yet. I also need to paint a few more details and glue everything together (in the photo above, all the superstructure is still loose), but then the model will be done.