On the heels of Kinetic's 1/48th release of the T-45 Goshawk comes Squadron Products Superscale Decal release of a full set of decals for the VT-22 "Golden Eagles." The scheme itself is excellent, with an eagle head flowing into red stripes decorating the back of the aircraft. There is one scheme on the sheet and it has excellent decals for the eagle, unit markings, and all the needed stencils. The decals are printed by Cartograf and are dense in color, thin in size, and perfectly in register. All national insignia and Navy markings are included.

One of the reasons I jumped on this sheet when it arrived for review was the scheme. I could do an "in-box" review of the decal but that would be no fun, so I built the plane. I have reviewed the kit elsewhere, but since Bill Kluge already provided an excellent kit review on the IPMS website, I will bypass that part. There are full-color callouts for the colors, so I started with Tamiya Pure white decanted from a spray can. It dries quickly, is wonderfully glossy, and applies well. I masked the International Orange panels and shot them with Testors. The large eagle decal requires you to shoot the tail (minus the rudder) Insignia red and I always worry here that the paint won't match the decal. I used Xtracolor and shot the tail. The top part of the tail was them masked and shot Insignia Blue. After all was dry, it was the moment of truth as I started with the large eagle decal. It was perfect – not good, perfect. It was dense, it didn't break as I coaxed it into place, and the color match to the red was perfect. Awesome. I do recommend lots of water and do not put the rear side fins on, as they remain white and should be added after the decal. I know from experience, as I took mine off to add the decals. A couple rounds of setting solution and they settled nicely over the very large rivets in the back. I did one side and let dry before adding the other side. The national insignia and "Navy" markings for the bottom are split to cover the actuators for the plane, and come in three parts each. A little time and they aligned very well. The rest of the decals are also excellent, and I clear-coated over them and finished the model. Take a look at the finished model – it is a real eye grabber!

I surely hope that Squadron releases more decals for this and other subjects. It seems that decal manufacturers have slowed down and there are a lot of kits that could use decals with this quality, both for new markings and to replace not-so-good kit decals. These are most highly recommended.

My thanks to Gary Newman and the great folks at Squadron Products for the chance to use these decals, and to IPMS/USA for the chance to review them.