The little name decal on my trainer which I mentioned in ModelFlight 1, has generated some interest, so our first item is a step-by-step tutorial for producing these small decals on your PC.

My first-ever fixed-wing model has now been test flown, and the second article recounts that great moment when you see your model airborne for the first time - surely you remember it?

d.i.y. decals

ONE WAY of making a decal yourself on your PC is to create it by using a graphics handling program, using the text insertion, drawing shapes and colour options for text, backgrounds and colour. If you want to add outlines, shadows and so on, this can be done by selecting and making masks, playing around with channels, etc., but it can be tricky unless (and even if!) you know your way around your graphics handling software.

However, Microsoft Word 97 ® has a very nice and easy alternative in its improved version of WordArt ®, and this tutorial will show you how to produce some neat little text decals from your PC and printer using this application.

1 Open a blank Word document and, on the status bar at the bottom left of your screen, ensure you are in Page View.

2 Make sure you have the drawing toolbar displayed at the bottom of your screen. If it’s not there, click on the View menu, drop down to Toolbars and click on the word Drawing. The toolbar displays along the bottom edge of your screen.

3 Click on the AutoShapes button in the Drawing toolbar, run your cursor up to Basic Shapes and point and click on the shape of your choice. Your cursor will change to a cross-shape; move it where you want to start to draw on your blank document, left click and drag the cursor to draw your shape. The positioning of your shape is not important - all you are looking for is room to work. If you don’t like your initial placing or size, you can move it by left clicking inside the frame and dragging, and you can resize by left-clicking and dragging on any of the eight handles around the frame. Alternatively, you can just press Delete whilst the frame is still selected and start again! If you intend to fill in the background to the wording with colour and then cut around the words as I did with Dawn then the shape of the box is immaterial, of course – it simply provides a limit to the area which you will later fill with background colour. On the other hand, if you want the border to be part of the finished decal, you can change its colour, line thickness and line style by right-clicking inside the border and choosing Format AutoShape and then selecting your options. 

4 Click on the Insert menu, select Picture and then click on WordArt. Click on a style from the Gallery that appears and click OK. The words "Your Text Here" will be highlighted, so just type the word(s) that you want, then select a typeface and size from the drop-down lists if you want something other than whqt is already shown. Click OK. For our example, I have chosen the last-but-one style in the second row of the style gallery, typed the word "Dawn" in place of "Your Text Here" and selected 36pt Nadianne.

5 Your selected lettering will appear on your screen with eight little box handles around the outside. It is unlikely to be correctly positioned inside the frame - it may even be completely outside it - so simply place your cursor over the wording, left-click and drag the wording to where you want it inside the frame. At this point, both the wording and the frame are completely separate objects and each can still be sized and moved independently by clicking either on the wording or on the frame, whichever you wish to adjust.

You can still edit the wording and change the typeface and size, etc., by double-clicking on the wording and using the Edit WordArt text box that comes up. Make sure the text is highlighted in this box before typing replacement wording. You might like to print the file at this stage, just to check that the dimensions of your decal are to your liking.

You now have an amazing variety of editing options available – you can change fill, line and shadow colours, the fill colour can be graded, textured, patterned or even made to appear as though the lettering has been cut out from a picture! You can drop the shadow or choose from a variety of shadow styles and add 3D effects to the lettering. All these options are available from the Drawing tool bar. Experiment with it, remembering you can always undo your last change from the Edit ® Undo menu. Let’s just apply a few changes to our decal.

6 Firstly, we will make the shadow black.

Left-click the word, then click on the Shadow tool on the toolbar (last but one at the right-hand end of the bar). Click on Shadow Settings and a small settings box displays. From this box you can nudge the shadow in any direction and/or change the shadow colour. Click the small down arrow at the side of the right-most option and then select the black colour square. Here’s the result:

7 Now we’ll change the fill and outline colours.

Right-click the word and choose Format WordArt from the menu that displays. In the Format WordArt box, I’ve changed the fill colour to a nice turquoise, the line colour to black and the line weight to 2pt. The black outline combined with the black shadow gives us a heavy outline with a slightly 3D effect to the lettering.

8 If you just wanted lettering on a white background, you could Save and Print the file at this stage, but we will complete the decal by adding a background colour. I’m going to match the background to the colour of my fuselage, so that the background colour will blend into the fuselage paintwork and make the lettering look as though it’s been applied straight onto the fuselage.

Right-click outside the wording but inside the frame and then select Format AutoShape. Click on the down arrow at the side of the Fill Colour box and select the orange colour square. And there it is! Save the file and print out as many copies of your decal as you require on ordinary paper. The frame and the wording are still two separate objects, but if you’re certain you do not want to carry out any further editing, you can save the image as a single object by ‘grouping’ the two elements. Press the Shift key and  click on the frame and whilst keeping Shift depressed, click on the wording. You will see the little handles appear round both images; then right click and choose Grouping ® Group and the two elements are locked together as one image. Save the image again.

9 After printing the decal, the final stage is to carefully cut round the wording up to the black outline of the lettering and then to hold each decal in place on the model by overlaying it with a piece of spare clear waste from a self-adhesive decal sheet cut slightly larger than the decal itself, thus protecting the paper. I cut a piece of waste larger than the decal, peel off its protective backing and lay the decal face-down on to the sticky side of the waste, then carefully cut the overlay back to size, giving a small but adequate self-adhesive border to the finished job. Apply the decal plus overlay as a single item. In the absence of any spare decal sheet, I wonder if that self-adhesive acetate that is obtainable from stationers to cover books, etc., would also be o.k. - it's just a question as to how fuel-proof it may be. I've even used Sellotape, but it's very flimsy to handle.

In the case of our Dawn decal, the orange in-fill of the lettering blends in with the fuselage paint job and thus gives the required effect of having been applied straight to the paint-job. Before I recently crashed my helicopter (Cathy - another daughter-in-law!), I had a pair of of these little home-made decals in place for 12 months or so without any sign of lifting, fuel damage or deterioration. If you keep the file, you can always print out replacements in any case.

I print the decals on ordinary 80 gsm copier paper which doesn't present too thick an edge to the decal. After applying to the model, press down the transparent overlay with your thumbnail or a cocktail stick at the edge of the paper and out to the edge ofthe overlay to avoid any milkiness caused by air pockets. With these small decals, it does not seem to matter that the paper itself is not actually stuck to the model - the overlay holds it nice and flat. I guess if you were to try larger decals, you could apply some suitable adhesive to the back of the paper, but I'm not too sure if the paper might crinkle.   

I FINISHED my model trainer a few weeks ago and had been waiting for some decent weather to take it to the field and request Gordon, the guy who seems to do all the instruction at the club, to check her over and give her an initial test flight. The weather on Saturday, February 19th, was a bit windy but I thought it worth a go, although realising it was probably too gusty for me to also receive any instruction.

Sure enough, Gordon was there along with a few other lads and my model, a New Yamamoto 1600, was unloaded from the car and put down on the field for inspection. I was well-pleased with initial reactions in respect of the build and finish of the model. I connected up the aileron servo, fixed the wing in place with six rubber bands and Gordon checked out all the control surfaces from the transmitter - all moving in the correct direction, thank goodness! Gordon felt that a little bit of adjustment was called for to reduce the overall amount of movement of the ailerons and elevator and he also put in some dual rate settings on my Futaba Field Force 8 transmitter to further reduce the movement for my training sessions.

Now for the proof of the pudding. I carefully watched, listened and did as I was told as we prepared the model for its first flight, and I must admit I was feeling really quite excited by it all. I filled the fuel tank and after a few flips of the prop to get a bit of fuel through to the carburettor, the glow starter was connected to the plug and the engine turned over with the electric starter. No immediate start, so a little fuel was injected straight into the carburettor and we gave it another go. This time, everything went a bit sloppy as the prop nut came off inside the spinner - and I thought I had tightened that really hard! Next try, the Irvine 46 Mark III started nicely and whilst Colin held the model steady, Gordon made an adjustment or two to obtain a nice steady idle. Next, Colin held the model nose-up whilst Gordon satisfied himself the engine was running OK in that attitude and then he headed off down the field with the transmitter for an aerial-down range check. 

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And then it was out on the field for take-off! It was a great moment to see Dawn rotate and gently climb and then to watch Gordon put her through her paces. A few circuits, a low pass or two to let me snatch a photo and then it was back to a fair height for a few gentle aerobatics.

Everything went fine and Gordon himself seemed surprised that she handled so well - it appeared that he had not been so impressed with a previous Yamamoto that he had flown, which explained a slight lack of enthusiasm that I had noticed a few weeks previously when I had told him my chosen model (the club does not insist that beginners use a specific trainer)! There was one brief moment when my heart was in my mouth, though, as Gordon brought the 'plane down in a spin from which she initially refused to exit! Happily, Gordon had plenty of height and he, too, seemed somewhat relieved when full control was once again established! A few more circuits and it was time to bring her down for a nice landing, despite the gusty conditions - great, and many thanks to Gordon.

There was just one snag; I had fitted a PCM receiver (and yes, I had set the fail-safe up correctly and to the current BMFA recommendations!), only to discover that the club transmitter used for buddy-box training sessions was a PPM only device, something which frankly had not even occurred to me as a possibility! So, before my first training session under Gordon's tuition, I had to buy and fit a new PPM receiver and change the mode under the parameters settings of the transmitter. I'll keep you posted on my training.