Santa Cruz Decals is a new company in Portugal that specializes in decals of the Portugese Air Force.  They have a variety of decals in 1/72, 1/48 and 1/32. 

This particular decal sheet includes the markings for the above plane....a Portuguese Fiat G91r/3 that attended the NATO Tiger meet in 1992 in Albacete, Spain.  

The black and white Tiger stripes directly behind the Tiger's mouth are included with this decal sheet.  The other black and orange Tiger stripes are not included with this decal sheet.  The white area around the Tigers mouth is not included with this decal sheet.  Considering how difficult it may be to get Tiger stripes etc to conform to this model, having to paint the Tiger stripes wouldn't be all that bad.  To do this paint scheme you'd need to figure out the colour of the lighter shade of orange used.  The darker shade of orange that makes up the majority of the paint scheme is Amareio yellow FS 23655.  There is a lighter shade of orange/yellow that borders some or all of the rearward side of the black Tiger stripes.  This appears to be a lighter shade of the Amareio yellow FS 23655 and could be custom mixed from that colour easily enough.  The underside is white and the black stripes are black FS 37038.  There is a need for reference photos to get the painting just right on this paint scheme.  The black and white instruction sheet does provide a wealth of pictures, but it would be easier to have these pictures in colour on a  larger instruction sheet or maybe on a  website on the Internet.  I did a quick search of some website devoted to Portuguese aircraft but couldn't find pictures of the whole paint scheme, but my search was brief.  I will make arrangements to add some walkaround photos of this plane to this decal review in the near future.

So how would you paint this plane.  One of the easiest ways would be to....

• First....roughly spray the white areas.  These would include the area around the Tigers nose/mouth, underside of plane, nose of fuel tanks and small area at rear of canopy.  Always try to apply the lightest colour first if possible (white in this case), because darker colours cover ligther colours easier.  

• Second....apply liquid mask to the white areas of the plane.

• Third....spray the darker shade of orange to the majority of the plane.

• Fourth.....mask off the areas that will remain the darker shade of orange.

• Fifth.....spray the lighter shade of orange to the areas where you will see it and don't be too concerned about this colour over spraying onto the areas where the black stripes will be.

• Sixth.....remove the liquid mask from the areas of the whiskers in front of the Tigers mouth.

• Seventh.....apply liquid mask to the area where the lighter shade of orange will remain and reapply the liquid mask to the white nose area leaving tiny dots for the whiskers that will be painted black.

• Eight.....spray the black areas of the stripes and whisker dots.

• Finish....Remove the liquid mask and apply the decals.

A slightly easier way that would require less liquid mask, but would involve painting orange over the black paint would go like this..... 

• First....roughly spray the white areas.  These would include the area around the Tigers nose/mouth, underside of plane, nose of fuel tanks and small area at rear of canopy.  Always try to apply the lightest colour first if possible (white in this case), because darker colours cover lighter colours easier.

• Second....mask off the white areas leaving dots for where the whiskers in front of the mouth would go.  To mask them you would find it easiest to use a liquid mask like Maskol.  

• Third..... I would roughly do the black stripes and dots for the whiskers....not the whole plane in black...just roughly airbrush the black stripes.  

• Fourth....mask off the black stripes with liquid mask.  

• Fifth.....roughly airbrush the light orange outline that shadows the black stripes.

• Sixth.....apply another layer of Maskol to the plane to cover the lighter shade of orange.  

• Seventh....Finally you'd airbrush the entire plane the darker shade of orange. 

To be honest......this second way of painting this model would be my preferred route, but it would all depend on how well the orange colours could cover the black.  I suspect they would cover the black fairly easily in 3 thin airbrushed coats of paint.

To use masking tape for this paint scheme would be possible, but much more work and in the end it would not look any better than a model done carefully with a liquid mask.

The printing quality of these silk screened decals is beautiful and perfectly in register.  The printing quality is also very sharp and crisp.....I look forward to using them to build a Fiat G91r/3 Tiger.

No doubt about it......a model painted in this paint scheme would attract much attention.

My thanks to Santa Cruz for the review sample.

Steve Bamford