CH-46 Field Green / Land Scheme Stencils

MAW-Decals, 1/48 scale

Reviewed by Rodger Kelly

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48-MAW-20 is a “stock” decal from Creighton Henthorn Jr’s Maw – Decals.

The markings provided on this sheet are stencil data and airframe markings in 1/48 scale for the field green/land scheme camouflage options of the Boeing Vertol CH-46 medium lift helicopter employed by United States Marine Corps and the United States Navy.  The decals are for use on the Academy series of the CH-46 kits.

As the title says, the markings are for the field green/land scheme camouflage options.  What does this mean?  Well the CH-46 has worn a variety of camouflage schemes since its entry into service but the specific schemes that they are referring to here are the overall Federal Standard 34095 Field Green scheme as well as the three colour comprising overall Federal Standard 34095 Field Green with a disruptive pattern camouflage scheme of Federal Standard 37038 black and Federal Standard 35237 Greyish Blue.

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There a plenty of stencil data markings carried by the CH-46 and you get two very busy decal sheets with this one, a normal sized one as well as a smaller sized one just to fit everything in.
The decal themselves have been printed by the Italian company Cartograf, one of the leading and most prolific decal manufacturers in the world.  Everything on my two sheets is in perfect register with the absolute minimum of carrier film surrounding each subject.

As we have come to expect from MAW Decals of late, the placement guides come courtesy of PDF documents (in full colour) on the CD that accompanies the decals rather than the more usual printed paper ones.  There are seven of these in all and each option gets both left and right hand side profiles as well as upper and lower surface plan views.  A separate sheet carries illustrations of each options nose.  The jury is still out with regard to placement guides on a CD as those who don’t have easy access to a computer will not be able to access them but for those of us who do a definite benefit of the placement guides being in PDF format is that you can blow them up very large and actually read the tiny stencil data!

The CD also carries nice, sharp, clear and very large walk-around type images of current USMC CH-46 aircraft as well as two short videos, one depicting the machine in action, and the other featuring the crash of a USMC machine (“Rockey 604”) whilst attempting to land on the stern of a USN ship.  I can’t stress how good the images on the CD are in assisting you with building one of the Academy kits.  Not normally a fan of rotary winged aviation I was tempted into building one of these machines following a tour of a CH-46E aboard the USS Bonhomme Richard.  My initial enthusiasm soon waned when I realised that there are many detail differences between the CH-46Es operated by the USMC and I did not have any reference to assist me.  I was delighted to find that the references images on the CD were all I needed to help me finish the kit accurately.

The decal sheets, and the CD come packed in a clear plastic zip-loc bag.

Another excellent product from MAW-Decals as far as I am concerned.  It provides you with stencil data markings to turn your model into a replica as well as some first rate reference material via the accompanying CD.

Text and Images Copyright © 2009 by Rodger Kelly
This Page Created on 27 May, 2009
Last updated 27 May, 2009

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