Hi Greg: congratulations, recalling we talked once that you were thinking of going to airbrushing. Let me share some of my own experience.

1. While you are making the leap, consider going further and purchasing a 5 or 10 pound CO2 bottle. I spent several years struggling with a Binks Wren single action airbrush (it was great) and a little Badger 180 air compressor (which still works after these 40+ years, I use it to blow off the workbench dust and debris now); point being that it was/is a constant battle with a compressor to keep water out of the line. I guarantee you will ruin many hours of work because water condenses in your line. You don’t have that problem with CO2.

2. Buy or scrounge pieces of Evergreen and Squadron sheet plastic. Use them to ALWAYS test your mix and pattern before spraying your actual model. I’ve ruined umpteen hours of good model construction with bad airbrush work because the paint or conditions were not right.

3. I mostly use Tamiya acrylic paints (because they seem more forgiving) with the illustrated additives. Usually 2 parts paint to 3 parts thinner + additives; at 18 lbs pressure. As to the additives, I pay attention to the room’s temperature and relative humidity.

4. I use a Paasche H single action airbrush; #5 color adjusting part for gross work and #1 color adjusting part for fine work. I own, but never was able to outsmart a Paasche double action airbrush. It resides safely disassembled because I never could figure out how to get it back together. (anything with more than one moving part confuses me)

5. It is a matter of practice and luck to attain an application that is wet, but not too wet. If it is too wet, you get drips and runs; if it is too dry, you get orange peel. But, it has to be just-right wet, so that it can level itself out.

6. Beware of the vortices. My term for those places where you will tend to spray several times from different angles and blemish a space that is grainy because you’ve created air currents that perturb the airflow where the paint is trying to come to rest. Such areas (for me) are the aft wing-fuselage joint area and belly tank area if you have attached the tank prior to painting.

I hope many others with more experience will share their techniques.

2 attached images. Click to enlarge.