Terrible Italeri Decals

So here I am, building my Ducati Monster S4 Fogerty 1:9 scale model, and I discover that the decals that are contained in the kit are pretty worthless. After 30 minutes of fiddling with the decal, the results of the carbon fender supports is terrible. As you can see on the left. Please note that the fender is about 5 centimeters long, so the decal does not have to fold in tight bends to cover the fender support. Right now I am leaving it at this, and wil try to get my hands on some Microscale Micro Set to see if I can make the decal soft enough to do what I want. If not, I'll just paint all the carbon parts with semi-glos black. Maybe it will not be realistic, but at least it looks better than the strangely wrinkled carbon stickers

Airbrushing is becomming easier every day. The gloss paints are really comming out right, despite some small dust particles which allways show up when you don't need them. I have no plans on polishing the paint as some perfectionists do, it looks way better than using a brush to smear paint into the detailing of the parts. I'll just place this model next to a hand-painted one for the contrast ;-).

I spent the rest of the evening masking up the engine parts with masking tape to be able to make the exhaust pipes a slightly darker color. I will try to make the pipes darker at the cilinders, slightly changing to a lighter metal color on the colder parts. Maybe I'll even manage to get the welding joints looking realistic, who knows. It's a lot of work, masking the engine, exhaust pipes and welding joints in the pipes took me more than 2 hours. I'll paint them in probably 4 different colors, so it will take some time before the engine parts are finished.