F-4 Phantom II Stencils HGW 1/48

[DocRob]

After some "Outings" lately concerning building other scales than 1/32 or 1/35 I took all my pride aside and confess, I do 1/48 Jets sometimes , I even built a tiny 1/72 Mig-17 and had fun .

To me the most hindering reason Building 1/48 Jets is not the scale or the lack of interesting subjects, it's about STENCILING. Some years ago I built a F-15 and lots of time were put into stenceling and the follow-up problems, like silvering, not setting perfectly, you name it.

I have one of the Eduard 1/48 "Good Morning Da Nang" F-4 Phantoms in my stash, which is in fact an Academy kit and some resin- and pe-am-stuff. Decals are designed by Furball and are printed by Cartograph and looking great, BUT the sheer number of stencils made me shiver, there are hundereds of them.

Two weeks ago I noticed that the Chech Company HGW not only provided Phantom stencils (No. 248020), but that theese are GROUPED wet transfers. That reduces the amount of transfers enormously. How they fit and if they are good to work with has to be tested.

What I did notice is that there are lots of differences between the Cartograph stencils and the HGW ones, sizewise and in clarity and Colour. Even the words (yeah you can read them) are different sometimes. I didn't go deeper into research yet about who is right and who is wrong, but I was at least surprised by the fact.

Compared on the contact paper the Cartograph stencils look clearly sharper.

If I recommend the HGW Stencils remains open till further research is done. If they are not too wrong I will use them, if only to reduce the stress factor of stenceling.

Cheers Rob

Sheet No. 1

Sheet No. 2

In the Manual you can see the groups of stencils (blue areas)

Number 619 (Cartograph) should be the same like Number 29 (HGW) 

Again the same stencil, left is HGW and Right is Cartograph

[MARU 5137]

Thanks Rob. Well written