American national insignias have evolved in time since the the very early days. From the unofficial emblem of red star on the red-white-blue roundel to the low-visibility markings of modern machines. This evolution took about one hundred years. Techmod have prepared three sets of decals representing three versions of popular American „stars&bars”, with or without outline seen on military aircrafts.

Decals

Techmod have released three sets of American national markings with the following titles and catalogue numbers:

U.S. National Insignia 1943-1945, catalogue number: B 48104

U.S. National Insignia 1943 to present, catalogue number: C 48106.
Type in use from July 1943 to January 1947

U.S. National Insignia 1943 to present, catalogue number: C 48108
Type in use from January 1945 to present.

The dates and tites above are provided exactly as given by the producer. My comment will be given below.

Sizes of original markings available in these sets:
A – 20 inches in diameter
B – 24 inch.
C – 30 inch.
D - 35 inch.
E - 40 inch.
F - 45 inch.
G - 50 inch.
H - 55 inch.
I - 60 inch.

Decals are printed on the 13x18cm size sheet and packed in a typical form for most aftermaket decal I know – a plastic zip bag. There are two same sheets of decals for each set.
Markings are printed in a glossy style. Carrier film and thicknes of print layer is barely noticable under a finger tip. I do not see any misalignments of prints or screen. Colours are saturated and equal for all sets. You may have a feeleing that fields of white stars or bars have a gently blue pattern – I am afraid this is only a technical fault of my scanner. In fact these fields are purely white on decals.
My personal experience shows that Techmod decals, especially those of latest releases, reacts very nicely with popular decal agents althouth I remember that in past it was not always so obvious for Techmod products. This is really important improvement of their quality.
Techmod have provided a very useful crib for applications of the markings. You just have to find a type of aircraft and there you have the answer which particular decals use for wings and which for fuselage. It takes about 10 seconds.

Remarks to the content

Although I really like the Techmod decals and the quality of transfers sometimes I have some remarks about the content. First of all there are different dates in titles of the sets and description of decals. Secondly I do not really belive in effective dates for particular styles of insignia. Quick searching of internet sites gave me different dates for two of these sets. I do not want to theorize here about real date of particular regulations, development in units etc. The best way in similar situations is to do your own search querry of references and make your very own decision what kind of markings use on the model kit.

Summary

If you agree for doing your own reference search or just need some particular decals representing desired US national marking these are the sets for you. We all have most probably encoutered problem of a torn decal supported by model kit producer or its poor quality (wrong colours, misalignment of colours etc) and needed quick replacement. The easiest solution was to canaabalize some other kit decals. You can now take it from the specialized replacement set. You can also customize your kit and compose markings for desired machine. Whatever you do with these decals I am sure you will not regret using it.