"Who needs 1/144 decals???" Topic

Guys -

I've been emailing back and forth with Dom about his producing 1/144 decals because I am in need of some for B-17s, B-24s & B-25s. Dom doesn't think there is very much business in 1/144 decals so, he doesn't make them.

If any of you guys have a need for 1/144 decals, Air or Ground, whatever. How about mentioning what you need on this thread so Dom can get an accurate picture of how many 1/144 guys are interested and what decals we need.

Thanks,

Kimball

Sorry Dom, I forgot to mention that you did do some 1/144 WWI decals.

kwk

I definitely need some letters for my B-17F's and G's (now I'll just need to look up some units, e.g. Schweinfurt/Regensburg Raids, Berlin Raids, etc.), and would like to see markings and lettering for some other planes as well:

USAF/USN Letters and numbers for fighters – Europe and the Pacific

RAF Letters for Spitfires
RAF roundel markings for Tempests – the ones in the Chinese kits are terrible now, with the most recent shift to a new owner
Underwing markings for the Bandai 1st release Spitfires – Battle of Britain

Luftwaffe numbers for fighters – Me-109's, FW-190's, etc.
German crosses for the Bandai 1st release planes, which could use some help.
He-111 and Ju-87 markings could be used too, for the Battle of Britain

We do quite a line of 1/144 decals. Not B-17s mind you, but lots of letters and numbers and markings for fighters. Check us out at truenorthminis.com.

I-94 do some as well, but they tend to be a random selection, or mixed with other scales

'Who needs 1/144th decals'

…Well for WW2, not I.

I want more excellent WW1 decals Dom. Get cracking with personal motifs and also Jasta 15 markings. They'll sell really well to those using Wings of War Miniatures.

Actually, with all of the pre-painted WW2 aircraft out there, I would love to see more 1:144 decals.

Interesting reading so far; what wants there are seem to be fairly "personal", which leads me to think I'm on the right lines (eg. Rob wants underwing decals for Bandai Spitfires – I can't see that being a great seller….) As Don has pointed out, True North already have quite a lot (indeed, their "British Fighter Decals" sheet has many of Rob's requests covered….) Their range is mainly fighter size, but they cover the main national insignia and suchlike quite well. That probably doesn't leave much that's actually needed…. I am still intending to try a sheet or two at some point, but they're not looking a high priority.

On the WWI front, the Jasta 15 sheet is in the advanced stages, having had the best part of 3 full days' work on it. I have two more sheets planned for release at the same time (so they may be a while yet) – after that it's "if they sell – the WWI sheets are a massive amount of work, so need to do well to justify the time and effort. I'll just have to see how they go and take it from there.

Dom.

WW1 French roundels and squadron markings are desperately lacking in 1/144 scale! British roundels, Russian roundels, and US roundels while yer at it!

A generic Central Powers sheet would also be very helpful if it included Turkish black squares with white piping as well for the Palestine Front…

Leland R. Erickson
Metal Express
metal-express.net

Actually, I need the top wing, and fuselage ones too for the RAF, but the underwing ones are non-existant, so are a higher priority.

A full set of them would be nice for the Battle of Britain, since many of the after-market ones are outrageously priced.

Dom -

I guess you are right. Either there aren't that many 1/144 collectors or the guys just don't need different decals. Could be they are content with what comes in the box or have several planes with the same decals.

Let me know if you ever do a U.S. Bombers or U.S. Fighters set. I could use them. I like all my bombers/fighters to be different.

Thanks, :-)

Kimball

I'll see how things go, but let's just say this hasn't exactly shaken my opinions….

Regardless of you opinions, Dom, what did you use for reference on paint schemes and markings for your Jasta 19 DR1. markings?

I'd like to repaint a couple of planes, but want to get the right colors under your excellent decals.

A combination of Ospreys, a Dr.I book that I can't remember the title of, and a couple of websites – I have an "instruction" file to go with them that I've just realised I've forgotten to email to the last couple of people to buy them – will sort that now…. (Nb. on colours I've specifically gone with the closest match I can get to the Wings Of War Rahn model rather than picking my own, but I think they're pretty close anyway. The Boelcke one I'm dubious about, but the Rahn one seems close to spot-on.)

Dom.

Have just checked my emails Gary – I sent you the instruction sheet (which includes references and paint recommendations) when you ordered the decals, but it bounced – have just tried again with the same result. Drop me an email and I'll reply with them attached.

Dom.

Thanks, Dom. Message on its way. Can't wait until you get some more WWI 1/44 done. I'll be snapping those right up.

Hey Dom -

443 hits, not bad for 1/144 scalers, huh?

Kimball

Hits mean nothing – 443 hits, but only 5 people expressing definite wants, only one item actually requested by more than one of them, and much of what they're requesting actually already available, just not in the exact format and price-point they're looking for. Oh yes, I can smell the commercial opportunities….

Dom, wearing his cynical hat….

Sorry Guy -

I stand corrected. I guess I have not learned to look at it in the same business sense that you have. Thanks for the insight.

Kimball

Rest assured I learned it the hard way – there are a few decals on my books that exist because a few people were desperately enthusiastic about them, and a year or more later have single figure sales….

Yes, some people would find a load more 1/144 exciting, but enough to justify the time spent? No, probably not…. What market there is at the minute is mainly WWI, and even that's pretty marginal, imo – how marginal I'll be finding out shortly….

Dom, who has bills to pay….

Get the D-7 decals up and we'll help you pay a few more.

Other than 1/144th scale Bomber nose Art, I can't imagine that there is much of a market for whole sheets of decals. Mostly what people want are enough to customize a few planes, and really they only need different call or squadron letters.

Dom would it be easy enough to produce a sheet of American Bomber call letters? The work to result ratio may be closer to justification than a whole bunch of different sheets.

As a side question, how many sheets do you need to sell to make particular set profitiable? For instance if you spent 3 days designing a sheet, would you need to sell 20 sheets, 50 sheets, 100 sheets or more? There may be a way to generate enough pre-buy interest to get such order numbers up. For instance, the local club often buys 5-10 sheets of decals then splits them up among local members, sort of a local decal swap, so that we can create several planes from the same squadron or group. If I contact a few local members for something like bomber letters, we could probably dig up a pre-order for bomber squadron letters that would cover enough lettering to outfit 18 bombers with a single squadron code. Admittedly our local group is probably a little unusual since we have around 1500 planes in various members hands.

--Binhan

To be honest I'd rather let the subject drop – as you say, very few items will get any level of interest, and a "range" of one or two sheets simply isn't worth producing – the time invested just isn't justifiable – taking the 3 days' work benchmark, that'd need best part of 100 sales to be worth the time, and that's simply not happening. Besides which, it's not like I'm stuck for things to do on ranges with less vocal, but far larger, player bases….

Dom.

(Still working on 1/144 WWI – had hoped to get them finished today, but the inevitable delays have put them back a day or two….)

Binhan -

Thanks for the support. You hit the nail on the head. We will just have to learn how to create the bomber decals ourselves. Once one of us gets it figured out, we need to share them so others can print them out, too.

Thanks anyway, Dom. We understand – time is money.

Kimball

Wait a while and I-94 may do them – they've just done some for British planes.

Between Dom and I-94 there's lots of new stuff coming out which is great news. I tend to see them as complimentary ranges and happily use both on my models.

Wait a while and I-94 may do them – they've just done some for British planes.

Yep – good luck to them there; hopefully that'll at least fill a few of Rob's wants…. ;-) I've actually just been reviewing my request list, and while the 1/144 WWI has had a steady trickle of interest, having checked my emails it's now nearly 4 months since *any* of the 1/144 WWII items requested got a single vote….

With that said, possibly I-94 will get more interest there as (a) obviously they've shown willingness to take a gamble and produce these first sheets, and (b) 1/144 WW2 is *extremely* uncommon here in the UK, while the diecasts at Walmart etc seem to have made it much more popular in the USA – being a US firm they're hopefully in a better position to take advantage of that.

My advice to 1/144 WWII gamers? Put your money where your mouth is and support I-94's gamble in catering to your scale. As for 1/144 WWI gamers, well, please check my website tomorrow night…. ;-)

Dom.

Make that Wednesday….

Dom, having a bad day and hoping to finish off his Jasta 15 models….

Yep Timmo -

I'll support them all the way. I picked up 10 packs of I-94 decals at HISTORICON. They are for 15-20mm but I intend to use parts of them on my 1/144 planes. Also picked up one pack of their 1/300 bomber tailmarkings as a guide to help me make them for 1/144s.

Thanks,

Kimball

Sorted…. domsdecals.com

Bought. Nice job including all the national insignia as well.

Dom are any more WW1 decals coming out?

I would of thought with Shapeways churning out their WW1 planes, the demand for decals might have gone up.

I personally would like to see some Russian and Belgian national markings on also a set joseph jacobs Fokker Dr1 as I can't be bothered to paint that myself!

Dammn my mother for throwing out all my 1.72 planes when she moved to France!

Speaking personally, I am nostalgically excited to hear that the old Revell 1/144 range is coming out again shortly, and for those I'd love to have some squadron code letters for the RAF and some tail swastikas for the Germans. I will investigate the alternatives suggested in this thread, which I didn't know about so thanks for the heads up.

Are Skytrex still producing 1/144?

There are various companies out there doing 1/144th for air and ground which dont get much notice. Scale Specialties for example do a very nice series for both ground and air thought they do bill their decals as 1/160th which is, as we used to say close enough for government work.
ss-sms.com/smsown2k7.html

Reviresco tin-soldier.com does quite a few 1/144th decals (mostly WWI) We have national marking sheets for German, British, French, US and Belgium. Check them out.

Thanks John McEwan

Dom are any more WW1 decals coming out?

Only just seen this, sorry – oddly resurrecting a 4-year old thread isn't necessarily the most reliable way of asking someone a question…. ;-) [I very rarely browse the boards – usually I only follow the last few days' topics on the homepage or search for topics I've posted to recently, so this isn't a good way to get my attention….]

I've got a few bits and pieces out shortly – have been very badly behind for much of this year thanks to rubbish health and life in general, but am finally in a position to work on some new releases. Various extra roundels (Belgian, reversed-colours Italian, French with a darker late war blue, in 1/3/5 as well as 1/2/3 ratios) are due very shortly.

That's the good news done though; no plans for more detailed stuff at the moment; it's very time consuming to produce (not to mention moderately expensive with doing example models for the instructions), the Shapeways interest seems to have passed its peak (certainly I'm selling less of the 144 stuff than last year), and their recurrent QA problems, coupled with the recent announcement that "if your model's banded, tough, we won't replace it" also mean I really couldn't recommend them to anyone asking about models at the moment.

Somewhere down the line I would like to add a few more squadron sheets – indeed I've about half a dozen in varying stages of completion, but until there's decent model availability, they're just not going to be worth the time it'd take to finish them off, purchase and paint example models, photograph them, write out the instructions, etc…. I must admit I did think hard about a Gotha sheet now that the new Wings Of Glory models are finally with us, but I suspect the price of the models is too high for most people to consider multiple purchases and repaints on those. Something for the Series 5 models when they reach us may be a possibility though, and should we reach the happy day of series 1 reprints, I'll certainly be blowing the dust off of a few part-done files….

Dom.

I'd agree with Dom on the Gothas. In the UK they are about £26.00 GBP – £28.00 GBP and for many they are just too expensive to really consider as 'squadron aircraft'.

I am however, eagerly awaiting the Series 1 reprints and once they become widely available again I very much hope to see a resurgence in interest in the miniatures. Of course the price point may be the telling factor. If a scout is over £10.00 GBP that somehow seems to be the break point for me, purely psychological I expect.

I hope these S1 repaints do provide the stimulus to create the need within the market to justify Dom producing more squadron sheets in the future. All assuming Ares games are mildly interested in giving us colour schemes that aren't total nightmares to adapt.

It all sounds great but I don't expect we'll see Series 1 repaints until well into next year and heaven only knows when we might see an SE5a again in an easily convertible scheme. We can but hope.

I have similar feelings on price – WWII series 3 are £10.99 GBP rrp, so I'd expect the same, but most places discount to some degree – I generally knock 10% off, which at least gets it back under the tenner, however marginally….

(I am expecting horrendous paint schemes from our point of view, though, unfortunately – while hoping Ares will change the direction, I strongly suspect they'll stick to the "pick colourful and distinctive markings" approach, eg. the mooted Kissenberth Camel and Madon SPAD. A nice vanilla plane with standard camouflage and minimal markings is the dream for repainters, but not one I'd get too hopeful about at the moment….)

"A nice vanilla plane with standard camouflage and minimal markings is the dream for repainters."

Yes indeed, and you'd think they could at least manage it with the Camel and SE5a but I fear we are in for a hard time. I know the repainters are a small market but we do buy in bulk. For example I have about 10 Rhans, 5 Schaffers, etc etc so they need five to ten typical players to match the buying of one repainter. I really don't see it as a big loss to do one of the three in a plain scheme afterall the Bacara SPAD and the Belgian Camel/DH4 have hardly been big sellers. And had that Camel been in bog standard RFC PC10 they'd have sold shed loads of them.

We know the Rhan Dr1 has gone and with it Jasta 19. I'm hoping they keep the Jasta 15 DVII as it must have been the best seller of the three and one of the best of all.

I'm hoping the Lother von R. DR1 might prove useful since even if we have to repaint the top wing and the tail at least they are accessible and in a pale colour. Similarly the Jasta 5 DVa might lend itself to other Jasta 5 machines with their red lined green tails.

What I'm really waiting for is the SS DIII/DIV since I'm hoping they will do one in Jasta 12 colours then I can complete my JGII collection.

You ought to be in luck there, or at least close enough – I'd have thought Greven's lightning bolt D.III would be the most obvious pick, but a Jasta 12 bird, or at least a JG.II one, should be a given, and two JG.II ones a possibility given the limited number of SW D.III eqipped units there are to pick from. [Although part of me suspects we'll end up with a Swiss model as one of the paint schemes….. :-(. ]

(As an afterthought I *really* hope they keep the Schafer D.VII, but in the UK at least it was actually the last one to go out of stock at the distributors, to my great surprise. Can only hope that if it is a casualty we at least get another model with full wing lozenge camo as a replacement, maybe a J40 bird such as Degelow's.)

Yes we might be really lucky with the SS and get Jasta 12 – Graven, Jasta 15 Berthold and the all white one prepared for Grottsch Jasta 19. How cool would that lot be? Knowing the history of the range I bet we get another Udet 'Lo!'.

Schafer seems to fit their remit and I'd like it simply because I only got half way through doing Jasta 15 before they got hard to find then very expensive. As you write a Jasta 40 plane would be superb as it's a pretty easy one to work on with pretty much all white decals and nice graphic ones at that. There would probably be some others that the model could be used for. Did Jacobs fly a black DVII?

I did think at one time that one of the yellow DVII would be a good one as well. It fits their remit for something distinctive, since they've used very little yellow so far, and IIRC there are a number of options for repaints assuming it has full lozenge wings, including MFJ. I'm not sure on this though as I never looked into it in much detail.

What I'd love them to do is put out the choice of each third plane paint scheme to public vote. So you log onto their web site, they get your email to send marketing material to and you get to vote on the third paint scheme out of each three. Perhaps if they had five options to vote for. I can but dream… They could do all sorts of stuff, I know Hornby model trains has a collectors club that you can join to get special editions and such like and you can pre-order to ensure you get models. I guess it must help them gauge demand to a degree.

I'm sure I've read that they are going to drip feed new releases of S1 so they don't all come out at once. That was something I was keen to see since my budget is about 2/3 scouts a month maximum.

So, who does the best range of decals. I need some 1/72nd US/UK/Ger/USSR/Japanese tank markings (one of the "joys" of buying in bulk is all the kits have the exact same markings).

In 1/72nd Aleran would probably be my starting point – there are a *lot* of good decal ranges in 1/72, but they tend to be aimed at modellers, so you get particularly well-known and/or well-photographed vehicles, rather than markings for a whole unit.

Yeah, who needs them?!

I have a ton of 1/144 decals. Early war Brit roundels, numbers, German fighter, Stuka, 110, and Bomber crosses and numbers, US fighter and bomber stars (and early war with red centres) and numbers, Italian fighters, Japanese, Jagdgeschwader shields, Russian fighters and bonbers, Polish fighters…….PM me or send an email:

David.Jackson2@ec.gc.ca

I think the "resurrection" of this thread has been mainly on the subject of WWI rather than WWII though Dave – to be honest it's a good advert for banning thread necromancy or having old topics automatically lock after a few months…. ;-)

But I did get an answer,even if was just because you happened to look old chap! :)

I would be interested (aircraft).

My interests lay in between the 2 great wars. Chaco war, China/Japan etc. Also quasi fantasy stuff like A Very British Civil War or Banana republican style conflicts set in the 30's.

So my interests are both eclectic and likely to be low volume in the extreme! (in short, not likely worth your while).

One thing could have wider appeal is some of the strange heraldic devices that appear on the some British aircraft (and no doubt aircraft of some other nations).

Example would be these elongated triangle flashes

Zigzags (hollow or solid)

Chevrons in line

there are people out there doing checks, plain lines and diamonds but these others are more tricky to do in paint.