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Twobobs Aviation Graphics |
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1/72 F/A-18F Rockin' Rhinos |
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Stock Number: 72-045, 72-046 |
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Reviewed By Clarence Wentzel, #11478 |
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MSRP: $11.00 USD I have a friend who says that decals are eye candy for modelers and I can agree with him based on the size of my own decal stash. Bob Sanchez of Twobobs decals seems to love to provide modelers with continuing fixes for this love affair. These two sets of decals provide recent colorful markings for five examples of the F/A-18F two-seat model. Bob usually chooses markings of CAG or CO aircraft because they are more colorful. The “Rockin’ Rhinos Part 2” sheet provides markings of a CAG aircraft of VFA-11 Red Rippers and the CO aircraft from VFA-154 Black Knights. The “Rockin’ Rhinos Part 3” sheet provides markings of two aircraft of VFA-2 Bounty Hunters and one from VFA-154 Gladiators. One of the Bounty Hunter markings is full color and probably the CAG aircraft. The other is in low visibility version of the same markings. The CAG bird has red, white and blue stripes on the forward fuselage and the tail. These markings harkens back to similar markings on their first F-14 Tomcat aircraft. The Gladiators markings are for the CAG aircraft. The attached photos of the instructions and the decal sheets show the colorful markings to good effect. The decals provided by Twobobs are printed by Microscale and are thin, opaque, position easily and have great color. It is noted that the Bounty Hunter CAG markings on the Rhino 3 sheet are duplicates of the markings provided with my Hasegawa F/A-18F kit but the white areas of the Twobobs decals are much brighter. For this reason, they also duplicate the national insignia markings. Twobobs also duplicate the “slime light” decals. The color of the Twobobs lights are, in my opinion, a much better replication of the actual color than the kit decals. Kit decals should still be used to provide the myriad the small markings that cover modern aircraft as well as some of the openings or surface antennae. No matter how good the printing process is, there is always a chance of one of the colors being slightly off register. Usually this is not too evident with current printing technology but can still exist, especially when the image contains very fine details. Twobobs solves this problem by going back to a method used in the early days of the hobby, multiple part decals. In areas where several colors overlap and detail is fine and alignment is important, Twobobs will utilize multi-part decals. The basic image decal is first applied and allowed to dry. Then the detail decals are applied. Of course, the modeler must apply the detail decals accurately. Examples of this usage include the red bars on the national insignia, the white lettering on the air intake warning stripes, the drop shadow decorations on various individual aircraft and group numbers and of course, details of the squadron emblems. This tends to make the decal application process longer but these details allow the modeler to produce that perfect model. The painting instructions provided by Twobobs provide a general overview of the painting of the model but they are not complete. The modeler should look at the kit directions along with the great photos of the actual subjects that are provided by Twobobs. One example is the trailing edges of the rudder and wing. The kit directions indicate call for these areas to be painted a grayish blue and the photos provided by Twobobs confirm this coloration. Also, Twobobs forgot to indicate the background color of the vertical stabilizers of the Red Rippers bird. This is a dark blue and the anti-glare panel is flat black. With the Internet, it is always possible to find some additional photos of the bird that you are making. Please do not interpret my comments above as being negative. I love the Twobobs line of decals and recommend them to all modelers who are interested in the subjects that they provide. They will dress up any model. Well recommended. Twobobs decals can be purchased directly from their website - www.twobobs.net as well as through selected hobby shops and web stores. I prefer to purchase them directly from Twobobs because they do not add shipping and handling charges plus they offer other selected lines of decals such as Zotz, Albatros and others. A big thanks to Bob Sanchez for providing IPMS with these review samples and to John Noack for letting me do this review. |
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