@faraomike, thanks Michael, I did like this scheme as shown by Hasegawa and can imagine that this was used during that time. However not a lot to be found on the net clearly showing this scheme.

@lgardner, thanks Louis, I was also surprised by this scheme shown by Hasegawa. To me it looked realistic, although the net does not show clear images of it.

What a great trick with the antenna, my friend @johnb!
Looking forward to the final pics!

Unfortunately no great weather conditions in the Netherlands and with the rain predicted for tomorrow there will be no good chance to take pictures outdoor on short notice.

Therefore I decided to take pictures with artificial light, not my preferred condition but I wanted to show the finished Zero.

Article for the headlines with additional pictures is coming up.

Thanks a lot to all who have contributed in this thread and helped me in getting the most out of this kit.

Especially thanks to Spiros @fiveten who invited me to take part in this thread as well, his build helped me a lot.

@wkubacki, thanks a lot Woody. I recently heard about this trick here on iModeler although I cannot recall who wrote it. Simple but very effective.

@fiveten, @holzhamer, @lis, @wkubacki, @lgardner, @garaomike, @michaelt, @gblair, @tcinla, @eb801, @jaltergott6, @holzhamer0, @holzhamer1

Reading the book "Jagdwaffe by Eric Mombeek - Battle of Britain phase four", I came across this cross-hatch scheme also used on some 109's. The picture shows a 109E-3, Yellow 5 from 9./JG54 in September 1940. Before I came across this scheme on the Zero I never saw any picture of the existence of this kind of camouflage.

Probably the same story with all the in-field attempts to darken the sides of the 109 with the "high" RLM65 scheme. This scheme looks like a "quickie" attempt to break up the shape. Given the underlying scheme/pattern, this is likely the RLM 70/71/65 scheme adopted spring 1940 before the Blitzkrieg.

Take the above as an "educated guess" with the emphasis on the second word - but operationally that explanation fits. By the fall of 1940 the German fighter units were pretty worn out, so taking a lot of time to do something to darken the sides wouldn't have been that likely - thus a "quick and dirty" scheme. If I was going to do this, I'd use RLM 71 for the cross-hatching.

Not really an odd “ace” plane Lis, at least one JG.52 gruppen flew “Emils” sporting this crisscross pattern of 70 or 71 over the high fuselage 65 blue camo. And although I have in memory another 109 from another squadron using it I can’t trace the source where I saw it, probably one of my books somewhere, and most likely the same unit as John posted up.
My build of the CO of 6.JG/1 machine, a 190 A-4 was probably painted from one of the mechanics that originally served in that JG.52 unit - educated guess here 😉

Another thought about this sort of camouflage is that it probably mimics the shades of those camouflage nets used on top of the planes dispersal “foxholes” imo

Here's another net found one, my friend @johnb!