paulk
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- Oct 19, 2005
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A retro SLS Laser-X? Now that seems redundant. This was my birthday gift last fall, and has been slowly progressing all winter; Wanting to do something to make mine stand out from the crowd, but lacking much originality 
, I perused through the various catalogs on ninfinger. For color scheme, I chose the '69/'71 scheme, but how to get that white lettering? I've never done decals before, but this seemed like the time to try it. Having only an inkjet printer, I figured I was in for some experimentation. I picked up 3 sheets of white decal paper from the LHS, which was branded bare-metal foil. With no artwork to use at this size, I redrew the vertical lettering and ovals from scratch; the fonts are not an exact match, but close enough for me. After printing them out on regular paper to check the size, I printed them on the decal paper; I have a Canon MP600 photo printer, which has 3 color and 2 different black cartridges. I don't really know what the difference between the black cartridges is, but figured I'd get the best results by using the glossy photo paper settings. They printed out wonderful, a nice deep glossy black. The decal sheet said to use a fine spray of micro-scale decal film to protect them, but having no air brush, I simply brushed it on like I do with other decal sheets. I cut just inside the black on all the decals, and was worried that I might get some bleed at the edge, but did not get any. I don't know if this was due to the type of ink, paper, or the decal film. So last night, cut out the decals, and the photos show the results. I'm pretty happy how it turned out; no white around the edges of the decals show, and the white stands out pretty good. The only thing I would do different would be to make black decals for the top of the lower section. This decal paper is pretty thin, so I had to work slowly, but no tears. FWIW, I also put decal film on the Semroc decals for the top, but I think that was a mistake; they curled up at the edges, maybe they were too thick? The only reason I put the Centuri logo on one fin was that it was a lot easier to draw than the Semroc logo.
The build was by the book, with minor exceptions; a longer piece of Kevlar, I could just picture that big elastic band snapping the upper section back into the lower. Based on some other suggestions here, I let the motor tube hang out just a bit to hold a wrap of tape for retention. Oh, and I added the fin pods/lasers/whatever, even though they will probably break on every landing. It just really needs those to look complete. This is my first 29mm bird, though I expect to fly it initially on 24mm RMS; The E18 & F24 reloads are all ready to go.
, I perused through the various catalogs on ninfinger. For color scheme, I chose the '69/'71 scheme, but how to get that white lettering? I've never done decals before, but this seemed like the time to try it. Having only an inkjet printer, I figured I was in for some experimentation. I picked up 3 sheets of white decal paper from the LHS, which was branded bare-metal foil. With no artwork to use at this size, I redrew the vertical lettering and ovals from scratch; the fonts are not an exact match, but close enough for me. After printing them out on regular paper to check the size, I printed them on the decal paper; I have a Canon MP600 photo printer, which has 3 color and 2 different black cartridges. I don't really know what the difference between the black cartridges is, but figured I'd get the best results by using the glossy photo paper settings. They printed out wonderful, a nice deep glossy black. The decal sheet said to use a fine spray of micro-scale decal film to protect them, but having no air brush, I simply brushed it on like I do with other decal sheets. I cut just inside the black on all the decals, and was worried that I might get some bleed at the edge, but did not get any. I don't know if this was due to the type of ink, paper, or the decal film. So last night, cut out the decals, and the photos show the results. I'm pretty happy how it turned out; no white around the edges of the decals show, and the white stands out pretty good. The only thing I would do different would be to make black decals for the top of the lower section. This decal paper is pretty thin, so I had to work slowly, but no tears. FWIW, I also put decal film on the Semroc decals for the top, but I think that was a mistake; they curled up at the edges, maybe they were too thick? The only reason I put the Centuri logo on one fin was that it was a lot easier to draw than the Semroc logo. The build was by the book, with minor exceptions; a longer piece of Kevlar, I could just picture that big elastic band snapping the upper section back into the lower. Based on some other suggestions here, I let the motor tube hang out just a bit to hold a wrap of tape for retention. Oh, and I added the fin pods/lasers/whatever, even though they will probably break on every landing. It just really needs those to look complete. This is my first 29mm bird, though I expect to fly it initially on 24mm RMS; The E18 & F24 reloads are all ready to go.
