3 Week Painting Challenge - day 10 - Decals and done

And done - ok no pilots, but good enough

My first post on this subject mentioned how the Poles had done some thinking when designing the Pzl P11c. This extended beyond the basics of design to the markings. At some point (shortly after having a giggle that the Brits and French actually painted bullseye style shooting targets on their planes) someone sat down and did some thinking about markings. Symmetrical markings, they reasoned, made it easier for opposition shooters to estimate the range and deflection, so why make it easy?

They came up with an idea to have the national markings placed at different parts of the wing, so outboard on the port wing but inboard on the starboard. A picture paints a thousand words apparently so here is a picture of what they did.

 

Which I think you will agree looks strange

I don't know how much this worked but you have to say there is evidence they were thinking out of the box! Personally I think it looks bloody odd.

I couldn't get any Squadron specific decals as originally planned - the Great Decal Drought of 2023 etc, but the i-94 ones I got from Pendraken are more than good enough. The individual numbers were a bit of an issue - I had some spare numbers from a Soviet set but had to carefully slice them down as these Sovs were using 2 digit numbers such as 01, 02, 03 etc however the Poles did not. They will do. 

So all that is left to do is the pilots. I think I may just not bother as it is a lot of faff and I don't think it will make much difference.

This has been quite an interesting project, but ironically I'm not sure I will use them at Summer Scramble this year. Partly because at the moment we have an odd number of players and I'm acting as sub so will need to drop out of gaming, and partly because I'm not sure, plucky though they undoubtedly are, these guys fit my play style. Will know in ten days I suppose, til then,