Double Pancake

[ericr]

Sorry Ericr, no chance of blue or yellow. 

Actually Ericr there is a touch of blue on it now. 

what about a wee hint of yellow somewhere? spinners ? 

There's the ejection seat firing handles, they're yellow and black.

But they're only about 2.5 mm wide................

ah, fair enough 

[kitnut617]

Gosh...how many TINY decals ! 
Thanks for the idea of scanning decals prior the use, just in case...

There's three detail decals on each blade, plus the ones I printed for the red stripe, and there's eight blades altogether. It's a VERY fiddly job.

I scan every decal sheet from every kit I build, just in case. The manufacturers hardly ever supply spares, and we quite often need them.

Kit, is it best to 'scan' the decal rather than 'copy' them

[PR19_Kit]

'Scan' them, as then you can use the filed image to make copies of lost or damaged decals if need be. Best copy them as .bmp files too, as while they may be much larger files, they don't deteriorate with time as .jpgs will do.

If you 'copy' them all you'll have will be a paper copy of the decal sheet, which will be handy to look at for reference, but will be no use for any further work.

I've got a 156 scanned sheets in my decal library so far, which takes up only 5.36 Gb.

[PR19_Kit]

This model is becoming impossible. 

While doing the re-spray of the tailplane I had two of the prop blades break off, and now while trying to glue them back, a THIRD one broke off from the other prop!

Once again we have manufacturers sacrificing practicality in place of scale 'accuracy', a subject I've touched upon with respect to landing gear axles. In this case the prop blades of the Pancake are mounted clear of the hubs on short but  very small diameter shafts. In the model they're about 1.2 mm in dia. but with those socking great blades hanging well outside the airframe they're just too fragile. There's no way the model will be transportable to shows as it is.

I'm going to have to drill the blades and the hubs and use wire reinforcements somehow, and that's going to be very fiddly and will probably require re-painting of the blasted blades! If I get this thing finished before the end of the GB it'll be a ruddy miracle.

[jcf]

Kit, .jpegs don't deteriorate over time, that's an old long-disproved myth, it's just 1s and 0s,
which don't change regardless of the amount of time that passes. The media they're stored
on can deteriorate, but not the actual digital file.

[PR19_Kit]

I've had .jpgs of my decal files lose detail and gain blurred borders over time, and .bmps don't do it anywhere near as much.

[AndrewF]

I've had .jpgs of my decal files lose detail and gain blurred borders over time, and .bmps don't do it anywhere near as much.

A digital file won't change over time - however jpeg is a "lossy' compression format: it saves a file by reducing detail of the original image to make a smaller file size. When you save a jpeg you can choose the level of compression - and hence the level of detail to lose; which is why it's a format used for websites, because you can optimise the payoff between a big file (in terms of weight) and detail. If you use strong compression on a jpeg you'll get a smaller sized file, but you'll start to lose detail - the image will begin to look blurred, or even worse, you'll get artifacts like the 'blocky' effect you get on some website images. Png is a better format as it compresses well, but is lossless, so you don't lose detail or get artifacts. But both these formats are primarily for web use. If you want to print, the other problem is resolution. On a screen, for an image at 100% physical dimensions it doesn't matter if the image has been saved at 72dpi or 300dpi - it will look the same. if you zoom in though, the 300dpi image will keep more detail. A 72dpi scan will be fine to look at on screen, but will print out blurred or pixellised. If you really want to archive decal sheets to reprint, you have to scan them at 300dpi, ideally in TIFF format. This will keep the same level of detail you have on the original document. But it will create big files.

[Dizzyfugu]

The blurring in effect is caused by the screen resolution of your monitor. It normally has only 72 or 96dpi at best, and that's also called screen resolution, because a picture file at this level is ONLY good for screen view at 100%. If you zoom in, it immediately breaks away and you cannot print from it without visible losses - that's why at least 300dpi are recommended.
BMP is a lossless format, but the files are huge because a lot of color information (each pixel) has to be saved. TIFFs are also "high quality" files. JPGs and other compressed formats just remember certain points on the bitmap and fill the gaps with algorhithms, so that less information has to be saved. But you lose quality, and it cannot be regained. I recommend PNGs, which are a compromise, but for printing files I'd stay with 300dpi (or more, 600 are better) and BMPs or TIFFs, in order to save the originals' quality.

[Weaver]

Just to add another point about file formats, if you want to modify an image at the pixel-by-pixel level, then ideally you don't want to start from a JPEG, and you certainly don't want to save it as a JPEG, at least until you're done and want to post it (then JPEG-ize a COPY of it, not your one-and-only file!). The reason is that as explained, the JPEG algorithm only remembers certain points on the original image and fills in the gaps by 'bluuring' from one colour to the other. This means that if you have a BMP image with a nice crisp black line on a white background, and you accidentally save it as a JPEG, then when you open it again, your black line will have a blurry edge made of 97 shades of grey and blue, while your white will now be 97 shades of very, very light grey*. Any simple attempt to FILL or REPLACE either with another colour will fail, although more sophisticated graphics programs than Paint have algorithms of their own to get around this.

*Ask me how I know...

[Knightflyer]

Well to steal Kit's thread for a second - thank-you for the above info Gents, it does help me understand the 'now why has it done that?' issues I've had when creating my own very basic aircraft paint scheme profiles in Paint  Especially the umpteen Shades of Grey .....and they even made a film about it! 

[PR19_Kit]

Which is why I do all my decal work with BMP files.........................

[PR19_Kit]

SORTED! 

After a good night's thought I approved of my original idea of replacing the prop blade shafts with wire, so today I've drilled all the blades with a 0.8 mm drill (!) and added the 30 amp fuse wire shafts. Then I drilled the hubs a similar size, and superglued the whole assemblies back together, making sure that the shafts didn't go all the way through to the prop hub or else I'd have been likely to glue the blades to the hub shafts and the props wouldn't rotate afterwards.

Drilling with a 0.8 mm drill is a tad scary, you expect it to go PING at any moment and shoot off across the room in two halves! It turns out that there's added advantage in having fuse wire blade shafts as I can bend the blades relative to the others to ensure they line up properly, but it's not that crucial as the real aircraft's blades could articulate like a helicopter rotor and they didn't line up exactly anyway. 

It's done at last, so I can move on to the wheels, gear doors, and those TEENY mass balances on the tailplanes, after I've tidied up the paintwork on the props of course.

[AndrewF]

To rant on about file formats (again, sorry) - there are two main problems with BMP files: they store information inefficiently, so they are much bigger than (for example) a PNG file.

The other major problem with BMP is if you want to print, as they only support RGB colour space (Red Green Blue - ie the colours used to make all the colours on a computer screen). If you print, you'll be using CMYK colour (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black - the four colours that are mixed to visually 'make' the colours in a printed document), so the colours you see on your BMP file on screen won't come out of the printer the same. For example, an RGB space can have really vibrant dark blues, which when printed in CMYK will come out really flat and "dead" compared to the RGB version. So when printing stuff the file you're printing from has to be a CMYK file as well - especially if you want 'accurate' colours on markings ("the red is too bright on the roundels" etc.). The "screen" formats like BMP and PNG dont support CMYK; the best move is to scan the original artwork at 300 or 600dpi in CMYK colour and save it as a TIFF file.

[Weaver]

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[PR19_Kit]

A) I don't have an option at what bpi to scan, it is what it is.

B) I spend quite some time adjusting the printed colours on my decals so they fit the desired scheme.

Having been doing this for a long time I know what works for me.