I don’t know how many times I’ve scoured through page after page of my aircraft decal sheets looking one or more dial decals to use on a particular instrument panel. Now, Airscale has saved me a whole lot of looking. They have produced a multi-national series of instrument dial decals in 1/48, 1/32 and 1/24 scale. This set, for US Navy aircraft, has scores of different instrument dials printed in two sizes. According to the list on the instructions, there are over a dozen different instruments represented on this sheet. Unfortunately, they aren’t individually identified or separated on the decal sheet itself. On the other hand, for that information to be useful you’d have to either be a pilot, have a better than average knowledge of the instrument panel being modeled, or have a diagram of the specific panel available to you to know what instrument decal goes where. It’s interesting to note that on the similar 1/32 scale US Navy set; the individual dial decals are numbered to match the corresponding numbered description list on the instructions.

That minor detail aside, what you do get are very high resolution, high quality black/white (no color) printed decals of a wide variety of aircraft instruments use on most all WW2 era US Navy and Marine Corps aircraft. The dials each have individual carrier film cut close to the decal, enabling placement either on the instrument panel opening (a setting solution is recommended), or on a back plate covered with the clear acetate fronting provided in the set, to be viewed through the open dial face on the panel. The easiest solution for cutting out these very small images would be to use a Waldron punch to knock out the individual decals.

Not only will these decals notch up the level of detail that you can add to your next model cockpit, but now you don’t have to go hunting through your decal collection to find all the dials that you need. My thanks go to Airscale for providing this decal sample for review.