Ace Combat Aircraft Models: 1:72 Scale

 Back in March I picked up a set of decals for Ace Combat aircraft  from China off Ebay. It had complete sets for 3 planes, plus numerous heralds for other squadrons including Galm and Razgriz. Last month I finally got around to getting the models for them. It was then I discovered the decals had issues. 2 were actually sized for 1:48 scale (Mobius and Yellow), and the 3rd was slightly larger than 1:72 (Wardog). This meant having to make new decals on my computer by scanning the originals and reducing their size.

Now for the builds.

Mobius  F-4E
 This is a kit made by a Chinese(?) company called Oioicioi(???). It's was of medium quality. Many of the pieces fit  good, and the fuselage  was two halves including the nose (very nice). The canopy left something to be desired though. In addition to not fitting correctly the frame lines were in the wrong place. Not surprisingly the original decals were in no shape to be used, but I tried using Microscale's liquid decal film on them, and this time it worked, so I had the data decals needed.

 Since the original decals were too large, I scanned them in and made new ones. It was then I discovered one of the blue shapes that go on the tail wasn't facing the right direction (both were for one side). I said heck with it, cut one out as a pattern, and painted the blue part on the tail.

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Wardog (totally not a ripoff of VF-84) F-14A

 This is an Italeri on like the Top Gun tom I made earlier, but newer. Construction went a little better than the last. I did  give it a full missile load by taking a couple of phoenix rails off a junk model and putting them on.

 The original decals were good, and luckily the ones on the set were only slightly larger than  they should've been.

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Yellow SU-37

 This is a Russian Zvezda model and was a pretty nice kit. The parts fit nicely for the most part, and it had options on how to position all of the wing flaps and the afterburners. The ailerons and canards are movable. It came with a full load of 12 R-27ER and ET, and R-60 missiles.

 Like it was with my 1:144 scale model, the paint job on this one was murder. Every photo I found of yellow planes showed differences in the camo pattern.  I suffered a setback when I lost the original decal sheet.  Had to get on Ebay and get a data set for SU-27 flankers (close to 200 decals including many the size of a pinhead. Needless to say I didn't put many on as they would've been hardly visible against the paint job).

  As mentioned before the set was for a 1:48 plane, but I went ahead and used the roundels and shields. Unfortunately the numbers were too large for the plane, so I had to turn to my computer again. This time I scanned in chips of the paint I would be using and used them for the custom decals. By doing this I hardly had to put any paint on them (with how narrow the number lines are it's very hard to use a brush). I made it Yellow 4 since I already had a Yellow 13 model.

 
  Altogether it wasn't too bad of a build. I might consider doing Cypher and Pixy F-15's since I have all of the logos I need (I really need to stop though XD).