Decals for Airplane Wargaming
There are a variety of companies that produce decals for miniature aircraft. I have acquired several sheets from various manufacturers
over the years and will list them as well as how well they turned out.
There are companies that actually produce blank water slide decal sheets, and I will list them as well. In order to use blank decal sheets,
you will need a good graphics editing program or pre generated decal file. Simply print the decal page on a colored inkjet and you
have instant decals.
I have found this to be the best way to get the decals that I want. If you are doing an entire squadron of
Spitfires for a Battle of Britain campaign in 1/300, you don't want a sheet with 1/100 or 1/300 decals on it. That has been
my biggest difficulty with getting decals: finding enough of the right size that I need, without spending money on decals I wont ever use.
Water Slide Decals by I-94 Enterprises : $3.00 per pack
Overall, I have found the decals from I-94 enterprises to be a good purchase. I have used several of the decal sets on aircraft
and they always seem to come out very well. They have a great range of decals from almost any era you might be looking for.
One thing to note is that i-94 Enterprises is not limited to aircraft decals, they have a decent line of armor decals as well.
The only issue I have with their producs, albeit a small one is that sometimes you have to buy a pack of various sizes of decals just to get
the one size you want, which leaves you with a hand ful of unusable product (unless you happen to have a buddy modelling in a scale you aren't).
The website for i-94 is in dire need of an overhaul, and ordering via the web is done either by phone or fax. I have seen these decals in almost
every modelling shop around my area, so they aren't impossible to get a hold of, but if you need more that 2-3 packs you will have to soecial order,
or order them online.
A good, solid product that has always worked for me. a 4.5 rating on the MNA scale.
InkJet Decals by WaterSlide-Decals.com : $8.50 per pack
When I first read about the idea of making your own water slide decals I scoffed, and didnt pay it any attention. Later, I lamented to a buddy about not being able to get an 8x10 sheet of
decals for the squadrons of Me109s I was putting together for a Battle of Britain campaign. About a week later he handed me 3 sheets of water slides of 1/300 iron crosses (exactly
the scale I needed). After he conviced me that he had found a website, made an order and then created them on his inkjet, I was hooked.
The packs come in bundles from between 10 and 1000, with a pack of 10 running you about $.85 per sheet. If you add in shipping and handling, you get around $1.00 per sheet. One only
needs to be able to use a simple graphics editing tool to make a document with your decals, then print. Easy. It took me about an hour to make a sheet of roundrels for my spitfires, and now
that I have the graphics file, it ony takes me a bout a minute to load the paper, and print the document.
One absolutely wonderful aspect of this method is that you can easily make all of those custom nose arts, personalized insignia, etc. with very little effort.
The only issue I have had with using these create-your-own decals is that sometimes my printer goes fritzy and I loose a sheet. Big deal, so I am out $.85.
If you are price conscious, are under a budget, or need some custom decals, this is the way to go. Good product, easy to use. a well-deserved 4.5 rating.