Bandy didn't make a wrong turn - he's posting in the customs section! I need some advice/tips/tricks from you customizing Gurus. Normally I don't do this, but the potential of the 25th Anniversary Cobra Rattler VTOL is so close to prefection but fails because of the stickers. So I just ordered a set.

As a kid I'd apply them as best I could with sticky hands and clumsy positioning, but this time around I want perfection. How should decals be professionally applied?

I've read somewhere that this Rattler is rather oily and requires a dry cloth rub-down on the body before any application process. Do I use tweezers? What works for you?

_________________

I use a hobby knife. Peel one side of the decal and let it adhere to the side of the blade. Remove the decal from the sheet and position the sticker on the vehicle till you find the proper place. Start attaching the decal on the opposite side from the blade and carefully remove the blade. This way you avoid fingerprints as well.

_________________

I do the exact same thing with mine. Give the vehicles a nice warm soapy bath and let it dry. After that just use the tip of your hobby knife to place the stickers and once you have them in place push them down.

_________________

Might help if you also wipe the vehicle with a wet cloth with some soapy water, to remove the release spray often found on assembled and pre-assembled parts. Like you should do when you are building a polystyrene model before applying decals.

_________________

Hey guys, thanks so much for the tips! I didn't know about washing the plane down with warm soapy water, nor the blade-decal application method - both worked wonders!

Got my Rattler reproduction Cobar stickers last night and you should have seen the look on my wife's face when I told her I was going to go wash my aeroplane lol. Everything came out really nicely, but there were some areas that left "air pockets" on some stickers because the rivets and panels are quite abundant on the body of the aircraft and unavoidable sometimes.

The Cobrastickers repro were awesome, my only gripe though is that lettering with black text does not show up well on this colour of the Rattler - too dark, but the yellows (arrows), reds (cobra logos, tagets), and white (warnings, intakes) are very vibrant. Overall this plane needed to be decaled to give it that much more character.

The other thing is too, I don't know how army builders do it - to sit down and decal 5 or 6 Rattlers seems like a real exercise.

_________________