Product Review: Aeromaster Decals

On my recent Avia S-199 build I didn’t fancy the looks of the Hobbycraft decals and substituted Aeromasters for the first time, sheet 48-119, which is of course one of their quite old releases. I’m always interested to compare performance and took this opportunity to evaluate the brand – certainly insofar as the quality of their product whenever this sheet was printed, and there’s no knowing that. However, quality is fairly consistent at a technical level and some brands have a certain expectation attached to their name.

Research-wise, the company made some choices which I was not able to substantiate after considerable online checking, and given that their nickname in the hobby is Errormaster, I decided to go with my own research on those points.

At a quality level, the decals were very thin and in register, and freed off from their backing after 30-60 seconds immersion, depending on area. They settled into place well but did not react very enthusiastically to setting solutions. I use Micro Set and Micro Sol, which are not the strongest chemically, but even so the decals developed wrinkles which in some cases took a long time to settle down. The setting solution was applied four times, and while it seemed to draw the decals tightly into the paint, it did not induce them to draw into recessed detail.

The large national insignia were quite strong enough to be repositioned several times, including being moved with a wet finger because a brush was simply not getting them there. For the most part the decals did their job, their carrier film virtually vanishing under clear coats, but persistent tiny air bubbles were a pain. While pricking the decals and rewetting cured the worst (notably on the wing walk stripes), there were rather too many to apply this treatment overall, and close inspection still finds some bright spots here and there.

If I had one major beef it was with the fuselage band. It was not long enough to meet and the underside of the plane has a notable gap in its ID colours. The decal was designed to wrap around the curves but the fact it did not meet up suggested to me I had it on upside down, so I coaxed it away and applied it the other way up … which was even worse, so I removed it a second time and reapplied it the first way. It is a black mark that firstly it didn’t fit quite properly and secondly that the instructions were not clear about orientation, but a tribute that the decal was strong enough and the glue resilient enough, for it to be handled so much and still end up looking right. Yes it broke, but the small part was nudged into place with the rest and the eye barely sees the joint, especially under clear coating.

It's worth noting that the striped rudder decals were not used, the hobbyist was obliged to cut the curvature of the rudder into them with scissors, the same way Hobbycraft wanted you to. I'm not that clever, I'm afraid, so I masked and airbrushed them.



In the end, the fact the model looks good must be the judgement call, and I will certainly be using the brand again, delving into the dozens of sheets I have in my collection without hesitation.

Product Review: Microscale Satin

Sometimes a product is under your nose and you don’t realise just how good it is.

The Microscale finishing system has been around since the 1970s and it’s hard to think where the hobby would be without the products churned out by Microscale and Superscale. But the clear coats they make, water-based acrylics in those no-nonsense plastic bottles, are something of a minor miracle. I’ve experimented with clears before and been largely disappointed: orangepeel finish, flats that are anything but flat, uncooperative airbrushing, not to mention the spectre of a terrific build being spoiled by a clearcoat crazing or going misty, which really renders the clear a dubious case of gilding the lily. But this was something else...

From time to time you have to experiment and working with Hobbycraft’s Avia S-199 kit was just such a build (article forthcoming). One major innovation of this project was the decision to clearcoat over flat paints rather than mixing gloss into the paint as I have previously. While this worked perfectly in enamels, in acrylics I found bright spots in the paint as if specks of clear gloss had failed to disperse evenly into the mixture. Thus the next step, try clear again.

Microscale’s clears are a joy to use. I have yet to give their flat and gloss a whirl (I have heard their flat will never generate a true flat), and in a sense satin was the friendliest possible experiment: I was trying for neither a dead flat nor a high gloss, but the perfect compromise between them, and this product delivered beautifully.

The liquid is milky in the bottle but dries crystal clear. Cleanup is with water, and I thinned the fluid for spraying with the same, by 50% or maybe a little more. It was extremely forgiving to work with, drying so quickly on the model that you can literally blow it dry with your breath as you watch. At the same time there is absolutely no tendency to tip-dry in the airbrush, which is amazing. You can slightly lift the sheen with successive coats, but not by much, the integrity of the lustre holds good.



Above, the Avia is seen after the sealant coat. The paint was sealed with an initial two coats, applied lightly, before the decals went on. Then the panel lines were accented with Promodeller wash, and the whole was sealed with another coat of Micro Satin. The sheen is even and attractive over the decals, and the panel wash, while not very contrasty the moment it was dry, jumped out into sharp relief with the wetting effect of the clear.



Decal carrier film largely disappears, indeed this is what these finishes were developed for, and combined with the Micro Set and Micro Sol decal solutions, is a straightforward means to quality decal work that should last a long, long time.

I have used a lot of this product previously in professional art, working with brushes to apply heavy protective coats to collectibles; put on in those quantities the finish is brighter, closer to gloss but not yet there.

The handy 1oz bottles hold enough for a dozen models or more, and at US$3.00 each are excellent value. I bought this one in Australia, but as a non-solvent based product it can be shipped by air along with most Microscale products – see them all at:

Microscale Industries