Teeny tiny decals for the Austers.

 Regular readers may recall that I painted up a couple of Austers AOPs recently (see  https://tgamesweplay.blogspot.com/2025/07/bpm-1144th-scale-auster-aop.html). At the time I bemoaned the fact that they are so tiny that none of my stock of decals would fit the fuselages.

In fact it isn't hugely obvious that they are 'improperly dressed' as the wings are so disproportionately large, the markings on those stand out and distract from the lack of fuselage markings. 

However, apparently along with being a control freak, I am something of a completionist (who knew?!) so the lack of fuselage markings has niggled. Strangely this compulsion doesn't extend to the underside of the wings but hey ho.

Anyway, riding to the rescue came John A who came up with the brilliant suggestion of using 1/300th scale decals instead of 1/144 scale ones. He duly pitched up with a pair of yellow edged roundels and a pair of stars n' bars, both Doms Decals. 

My goodness, they are tiny! 

I realised at this point that I've never applied a 1/300th decal in my life. I've always hand painted markings on 6mm vehicles and aircraft. The main thing with these ones is that they are on a continuous strip, so you need to trim them as closely as possible. 

I started with the roundels and left a bit of a gap around edge so I could grip them with my fine tweezers. 

The US markings were easier as they are a bit bigger. You can see how small they are compared to my big fat fingers, which is why I use tweezers for this sort of thing. 

In the end they went on without any fuss at all. Unlike my I-94 decals they didn't need soaking for three minutes each (!), 30 seconds did the trick. The only minor disaster was that I put one of the US ones on upside down, so it had to come off and go on again. 

If you squint very, very hard you can just see the markings on the fuselage. Even though they are largely invisible, I'm pleased to have sorted that out. While it was OK doing a few of these micro decals, I really can't imagine marking up a whole squadron of 6mm planes, so I think I'll stick to painting them where possible. Less feasible for US planes I guess.