A few other thoughts. One thing to consider is contacting a local sign company to see if they will cut your paint mask for you. This could save a few bucks in not having to buy a cutter. You may have to supply them the masking film. With a purchase of Corel Draw (or a free drawing program) you can do the layout and supply them the file....kind of like going to a local printer with your file. Personally, I think it's worth a few bucks to buy a machine as you can adjust on the fly. I have cut mask and found they didn't work right, made a small adjustment and back to painting.

One of the other things that's so great about vector files is the ability to rework them very quickly. When you edit a vector file, you work with what are called "nodes". Nodes are just spots along the outline (path) that you can manipulate to make instant adjustments to your image. Again, this stuff seems daunting at first, but can be learned in short order.

Here is a for-instance. If you attended the U.S. or the Cajun NATS you may have seen Mike Harrisons new Encore. Mike wanted me to do Cool Power and Futaba mask for him. I had to build the Cool Power image which just took a few minutes grabbing it as a JPG and converting it to a vector file. I already had a Futaba logo made up, but mine said Team Futaba and it wouldn't fit right on his plane. It literally took a minute or two (Mike it really took about 8 hours to do) to drop out the Team portion, rework the "F" and send it to the cutter.

OK, boys...just got notification my paint will be in next Monday!

Until then, start firing questions or thoughts at me until I can get on to painting. All four of you!