Siam
Scale is a decal company based in in the Far East and their decals focus
mostly on Air Forces of the Far East, but they also do decals for
aircraft of other Air Forces....such as Israel. This 1/72 decal
sheet focuses on 11 different F-5's of the Royal
Thai Air Force. There are enough stencils included to build quite
a few of
the 11 planes featured on this decal sheet.
Some of the
aircraft have colourful camo schemes. One features an
anniversary scheme for 50000 hours of flight.
Tail markings
include various artwork from a Cobra to an Attacking Bald Eagle to a
shark and more. The decals are clearly
printed. They are a glossy decal, but they aren't
overly thick and should settle down just fine....I don't see this as a
problem. The colour of the decals looks very good and the detail on
the tiny stencils is clear and readable.
I did have problems
figuring out where the National insignias go....the colour image to the
right show a National insignia at the rear of the fuselage below the
tail......but where they go on the rest of the plane is not
mentioned. Figuring out colours and camo for the 11 planes is very
hit and miss......you'll need some reference photos to go along with the
instruction sheets.
The instruction sheets
tell plenty of little critical info about stencil data placement, but
you'll have to study them carefully to figure out all you'll
need.
There are 4
pages of black and white instructions and one page showing colour
profiles of 5 of the F-5's on this decal sheet.
Because these
decals are from the Far East....the instruction sheet refers to one of the
Far Eastern Brand of paints. This shouldn't be much of an issue, but
you will have to dig up a conversion chart of some sort to figure out the
paint colours if your local hobby shop doesn't stock this brand of
paint. There ar e
5 different colours of paint mentioned on the
instruction sheet. The instruction sheet doesn't fully show the
right side of the fuselages for each plane.......so you'll have to do some educated
guessing about markings on that side of the fuselage.
Go slow on the instructions to avoid making any mistakes and you should do
just fine.
All
in all a nice set of decals of the Royal Thai F-5's (I quite like the very
top plane in the colour image at the top of this review) and I
recommend these to anyone wanting to add a Royal Thai F-5 to
their display case.
I'd like to thank Siam
Scale Decals for
sending me this review sample.
Steve
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