1:72 Rafale C 4-GI Rafale Solo Display 2018

The 2018 season and a coat of its own

Every year of the display program of the French Air Force gets a new artistic solution, so the machines of the individual seasons cannot be mistaken for one another. For 2018 the single-seat Rafale C with the code 4-GI served, and this sheet covers its appearance of that time.

The nature of the decoration

A display solution tends to be built on large continuous fields completed by thin lines and lettering along the fuselage. The most work goes exactly into getting the lines to join up. If a long stripe is set on even half a millimeter askew, the eye detects it immediately on a finished model, because it has the straight line of a panel right beside it as a reference. It is worth laying the piece on dry, therefore, and checking the parallelism before anything is soaked.

The second thing to think out in advance is the state of the surface under the decoration. A display machine is kept in nice condition, so exaggerated scuffing of edges and dark traces around panels would look false here. Keep the aging to a minimum, therefore, and concentrate it on the underside of the fuselage and the surroundings of the undercarriage bays.

A few practical rules

• Set long stripes from the center toward the edges, so that the tension is distributed to both sides.
• The base has to be smooth under the clear edges as well, otherwise the edge of the film will give itself away by a reflection.
• Treat the contact areas of the wing and the fuselage only once it has dried, so that the print does not shift during handling.
• Keep the leftover pieces of the sheet; small placards come in useful on later builds too.

The contents of the delivery are only a printed sheet. The kit of the corresponding size, the paints and the varnishes have to be prepared in advance.