Thanks again everyone.
This morning I peeled off the infamous film on the Eduard decals and am glad I did, as you'll see in a minute. The first step was to mask off the roundels and surrounding areas and apply a thin coat of the blue over the "UF" portion of the squadron code. I actually did it twice as I thought I'd achieved the right amount of transparency to faintly see the codes when looking at them by eye but when I looked through my camera, the letters appeared more distinctly.
Now, here's where the fun started. You see those tiny flakes on the left and bottom of the "U" and on the bottom of the "F"? Those are remnants of the decal film which are impossible to see until you paint over them with thin paint and they start to lift. At this point, I didn't notice them but they show in the pic.
The next step was to cut some "T" masks from my Oramask roll, stick them in place, and spray on some Medium Sea Grey. At this point, I saw the flake on the bottom of the "F", which I peeled off with tweezers, and found another at the top right edge of the new "T".
After removing the masks, I had some lifting of the blue paint. I thought that the paint would seal the decals but I guess it was just too thin.
There are NO shortcuts with these decals. I should have applied a solid clear coat before applying the blue but, even then, there would be no guarantee of a good bond. I was now loathe to mask again for fear of making things worse so I touched up the tears with blue paint by hand and then applied a good dose of semi-gloss clear.
In the above pic, the film on the "BR301" decal pulled off when I removed the mask and this decal got a very good coat of clear. The one on the other side stayed put despite me trying to peel it so I left it alone.
This is my second go with the new Eduard decals and I guess I still need to figure out how to get them to work for me. They look great when peeled but must be FULLY peeled before applying a coating over them. However, I've yet to have one film that did not tear into tiny pieces when removing it. The option of leaving the film on only works, in my opinion, when the decals are applied to a perfectly flat surface with no raised details, otherwise they just don't seem to sit down as nice as other brands.
Before closing up shop, I added the exhausts and the prop:
Well, the hard stuff is now behind me and it remains only to add a few fiddly bits and the IFF wires. I might be back tomorrow with more progress but in the meantime, thanks once again for the likes and kudos.