I'll go on record right here and say that I knew basically bupkiss about painting when I dove into this project. I decided to use the best paint I could get locally: PPG two part automotive urathane acrylic. Primer through basic white was pretty straight forward but then it came time to apply that awesome T-bird scheme and the fun began! In a nutshell I tried a number of layout techniques to duplicate the original scheme, none of which worked. I finally hit upon a process that would faithfully duplicate this, or any other, scheme properly. First I applied self sticking plastic wrap to the area to be laid out. Using sharpie marker you can layout the scheme and erase/correct until it's perfect. Once satisfied it's peeled off and the scheme transferred to mylar templates. Once the mylar is trimmed to the layout you can tape it to the aircraft and use a fine line sharpie to transfer the lines to the aircraft. These lines are used to apply your vinyl mask. For the sharp radius required for this scheme I used very expensive 1/8" vinyl for all masking. Once masked the sharpie wipes right off with denatured alcohol.
The green stuff in the picture is the sticky wrap. I had a half dozen mylar templates to replicate this scheme, only one is shown - the most complicated one. When all is said and done I think you'll agree that it is a process that works well.
BTW - If anyone wants to duplicate this scheme I'd be happy to lend my templates to them. They will most certainly work on any flash fuselage. Unfortunately, you'll either have to make your own templates for the stock tail scheme or cut your old Vstab off and make a new prettier one like mine so you can use my tail template
