My view on the project is that no matter how you build your plane you will be judged on two things - the paint scheme and the cockpit.
Regarding the latter I always felt I would head down the engraving road but in the spirit of homebuilding felt duty bound to explore the DIY route first.
So I tried decals printed with the ink jet then fixed with acrylic spray and initial result looked realll good; but when I tried it over a hole and then cut the decal and applied a switch/nut it chewed up - simply not robust enough for going over holes.
I had already visited an engraving company in Swansea in 2009 and so after working a double pay overtime shift I made all the required drawings and took the panels for engraving. The plan is to use non reflective Lexan reverse engraving using the panel colour as the background with white lettering a la Airbus and Hawk/Tornado/Jet Provost et al..
