Tamiya 14087 Honda NSR 500 team Pons (West)

This project started September 2001, completed October 5 2001.
This kit was released in August 2001, and features team Pons' normally tobacco sponsored machine the way it appears in countries wich bans tobacco advertising, with the west letters replaced by the riders' first names. I choose to build Loris Capirossi's machine since I already has one of his teammate Alex Barros' machines on display (in 2000 Emerson colors)
This also saves expensive aftermarket decals wich I've spent my share of money on, but they're available already and cost 600 yen for a set of west logos and 1200 yen for a full decal sheet, manufactured by Studio27.

Preparing and painting the bodywork
I assembled the bodywork in the usual manner, removed some join lines and painted everything with Modeler's C-07 real black.

Decaling
This kit has decals from the Italian (master) manufacturer Cartograf wich usually prints S27's decals as well, so they should be first rate.
As You can see from the pics the white decals has no transparency allthough they're applied straight onto the black bodywork and everything goes down really well too, they were excellent.
The shaded area that blends the white onto the black looks a little bit too wide and overdone, but no problem really. The Loris logos on the fairing sides needs to be cut in two, I did this by assembling the two cowling halves and support them with masking tape on the inside, applied the decal and let it dry for about half an hour before cutting the decal by running my scalpel along the bodyworks join lines.

Detailing
I've covered most of this in previous NSR build-up's, the only new thing here was that I cut the recess in the seat cowling straight into the plastic with a Deremel without supporting it or adding plastic pieces and it went fine.

Summary
A good kit like all Tamiya NSR's of course, but this one has better decals and an easier color pattern, making it an ideal beginner's GP bike model, it is far easier to build that a Repsol or Movistar NSR and provides a better looking result to most. Thanks Tamiya!