Yellow-Wings Decals 1/32 BF2C-1 VF-5B Decal First Look

By Michael Benolkin

First Look

Yellow-Wing Decals continues to amaze me with their well-researched line of decals. As those of you who've seen previous offerings, the premise of this decal maker was to present decal subjects for primarily US Navy and US Marine Corps aircraft prior to World War II, back when they all wore yellow wings.

Here is a subject I've been waiting for and for those of you who have stashed away Hasegawa's classic 1/32 pre-WII fighters, this release will be a welcome sight. Hasegawa produced the 1/32 BF2C-1, F4B, and P-26 many years ago and these have been reissued a few times over the years. Since most of these are now stashed away in kit collections like mine, you know the kit decals are no-doubt brittle and will be difficult to use.

Here we have two examples of the BF2C-1 in VF-5B squadron service which will provide some nice colorful alternatives to the kit decals. The aircraft in this set:

• BF2C-1, BuNo 9593, VB-5B, 5-B-7, USS Ranger, 1935
• BF2C-1, BuNo 9589, VB-5B, 5-B-3, USS Ranger, 1935

This set is printed by Microscale and none of the decals require multiple layers (one atop another) to replicate any given marking and each of the decals is in perfect register. It makes you wonder about those other decal companies that do multiple layered decals and blame Microscale...

Yellow-Wings Decals can be purchased directly from their website at www.yellow-wingsdecals.com.

My sincere thanks to Yellow-Wings Decals for this review sample!