Hey dlan,

1. I don't know exactly how many hours it took but it was a LOT! To get the scallops I first had to draw them out on poster board, and then cut them out and trace them onto the Monokote and then cut that out - very time consuming. I used the Windex method to put those on so had to wait overnight for it to dry before ironing it down.

2. Yes, I used the Great Planes pinstriping tape - very easy to apply and seems to be sticking well so far. The orange and white looked pretty plain, but the black really made it "pop."

3. I have that Monokote poster that shows some covering schemes and that gave me the idea for the top. I chose the bottom scheme to be simple but much different than the top so I know whether I'm inverted or upright. The poster is only $3 and shows a bunch of different schemes. Here's a link:

[link=http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXJA14&P=7]Trim Scheme
Poster[/link]

I spent a while figuring out what scheme to go with also. Once I had an idea of what I wanted, I just started drawing out different schemes on paper with colored pencils until I was happy with one. Black and yellow is a good contrast, so should be easy to see. Oh yeah, I chose orange, white and black because the plane is a Tiger, so those reminded me of a tiger.