Dear Santa

Dear Santa,

Hi, my name is Steven and I like to build models. I know you're busy preparing for your 'round the world trip tonight, so rather than ask you to give me anything I'm asking that you plant a few ideas in the ears of the model industry. I hope that's okay.

1. Please ask the decal manufacturers to produce slime lights (formation lights) for jets that are dirty. The decals in the kits and from the aftermarket guys are always bright and shiny. In reality, they can be filthy.

 2. While they're at it, maybe the decal manufacturers can produce decals of dirty Remove Before Flight tags. If my airplane is dirty, I'd like my RBF tags to be the same.

3. Please tell the manufacturers to stop putting those deep, engraved "panel" lines on missiles and other ordnance. Santa, I don't know if you spend any time at airshows during your off season, but if you've ever seen a missile up close, all of the components fit quite tightly together. Trying to paint stripes in or around those engraved trenches is very difficult. I'd rather the manufacturers just leave them plain and let me do the painting and decaling required.

4. As you know, I build 1/72 aircraft. The biggest weakness with models in this scale is the canopy. Tell the manufacturers to produce thinner canopies. That would go a long way to making my models more realistic.

5. While we're on the subject of canopies, please ask the guys over at Eduard to manufacture canopy masks for the inside of canopies. I know, using masks is cheating, but that sure would make our canopies more realistic.

Thank you for your time, and have a safe voyage tonight.

Your friend,
Steven