Editor's note: Sheet no.s 30001 and 30002 - $12.50 each; 30005 - $7.50

For those of us who love nothing better than trying to figure out where all of those flying wires go to and how to attach them, New Zealand’s Wingnut Wings has been a blessing and the best thing that has happened to our hobby in many years. 1/32^ndscale is a fantastic scale for WWI aircraft, yet they don’t take up a lot of display room.

The quality of the Wingnut Wings’ releases is still hard to digest, especially at their very reasonable price and free shipping, to boot. To complement their fantastic kits, they have now started releasing some equally stunning decals, all of which are printed in Italy by Cartograf. The registry is without fault; they are thin, and Wingnut Wings even recommends that a hair dryer be used to get their decals to conform to the model’s surface, instead of setting solutions. Amazingly, it works. Why, I don’t know, but there’s no cleanup afterwards. The rib tapes are even thicker, so when applied, give depth to the rib, just as the real thing would do. The sheets and their instructions are slightly larger than the typical U.S. 8 ½ X 11 sheet of paper, and little space is wasted. Each of the instruction sheets has a common side, which deals more with application of the decals, but the other side contains pictures of upper and lower lozenge and of rib tapes. The instructions show examples of straight and diagonal applications of the lozenge, and give a short history of the use of the lozenge pattern, and, yes, the inevitable disagreement with what the colors really were. You’ve got to love modelers who don’t build, but can pick a model apart! They make contests more fun. The only thing that is missing on these sheets is diagonally printed lozenge. Hey, you can always wish!

These are great decals, and allow you to do lozenge patterns without having your decals self-destruct when placed in water, or start breaking into a million pieces the first time you slide them on the wing’s surface. Until now, those were your only choices.

My sincere thanks to to Wingnut Wings and to IPMS/USA for the privilege of reviewing these decals.