Mike Grant Decals 1/48
Fi 156 Storch

A short while ago, I was digging through my stash of armor kits. I opened the three 1/35th scale resin kits, of Hungarian armor subjects, by Botond. These were ones that I traded a fellow in Hungary for. He wanted some of my company’s Armor Research armor accessories. These kits came without any decals. I put out a call on Hyperscale to see if anybody had some Hungarian national markings that they could spare. Mike Grant sent me an e-mail that he could help me out.

He asked me what size I would need, so I ran a ruler over the three kits and told him the sizes I needed. He responded that he was going to custom make these decals for me. I then became aware that he runs a company that produces and sells aircraft model decals. A few of his sheets have already been reviewed here and these reviews can be found in the decal archives.

After coming home from my trip to New Jersey, for my Mom’s 90th birthday party, I found an envelope from Mike from Canada. It had the custom made Hungarian decals, and 4 other sheets in the envelope for me to review.

The first of these is for the German Fieseler Fi 156 “Storch”. This was a heavily used liaison, observation type aircraft. The sheet is designed to go on the old ESCI brand 1/48th scale kit. This kit is now out of production, but it may appear in re-release by one or the other of the companies that bought up the ESCI molds when that firm folded.

This sheet has markings for 4 different aircraft, including a Swiss Air Force aircraft, a Luftwaffe night fighter unit Storch, a captured RAF desert aircraft, and a Bulgarian Air Force aircraft. The sheet is screen printed. At first the British roundels look misshapen. This is because they were crudely applied over the Luftwaffe markings on the actual aircraft depicted. Registration is spot on. The decal includes a full color instruction sheet.

I highly recommend this sheet to modelers that have purchased the ESCI Storch in the past. By the way, Storch means Stork in German. It got that nick-name because of the length of its landing gear legs.

I want to thank Mike Grant for this review sheet, and also for the other sheets he sent me. Especially, the custom made Hungarian marks. Mike does custom work, but currently is not accepting any orders for any.

Mike’s products can be seen by visiting his web site at: www.mikegrantdecals.com