Today was painting day. It was fun, sort of.
First, a little background. X803 had a really beat up paint scheme, I think due to three factors:
- It was an advanced fighter trainer. I suspect they didn't spend a lot of time keeping the paint nice.
- This plane was based at Luke Army Air Corps Base in the Arizona desert. I suspect the paint was often scoured by sandstorms, or simply from the action of the airflow from the prop.
- The sun is brutal in Arizona, so I expect the paint was fairly faded.
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1. Repainted panels.
2. Oil on cowling.
3. Exhaust
I was stationed at Luke as a young Lieutenant in the late 1970s, and I can tell you that it gets hot there. They measure the severity of the summers by counting how many consecutive days the temperature never goes below 100 degrees, neither day or night.
So, I was looking for a realistic way to depict all of this while painting. I had heard some good things about Mission Models Paint, so I thought I might give it a try. I had also heard that the paint tended to be fragile. I talked to Dave, the owner of my local hobby store, and he said the secret is to use MM Thinner and MM Polyurethane. He said that the addition of the "poly" would make it less fragile. It didn't take long to load up on the thinner, poly, and a selection of appropriate paint colors. Mission Models did all of the work for me, and I ended up buying 4 different colors of Olive Drab (very cool).
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I also wanted to do some chipping, so I started the painting process by spraying some VallejoAir Aluminum over selected areas of the plane. I let this dry overnight to get rock solid. I then sprayed a random coat of MM Olive Drab FS33070 over the plane, avoiding the aluminum areas that I wanted to show when I was done. I chose to use this color first because it has a brownish tint that reminds me of what Olive Drab looks like after it fades. Once this layer was dry, I sprayed AK Worn Effects over the initial OD.
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1. Silver added for chipping
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1. 1st olive drab applied, leaving silver on leading edges, wing roots, and a few panel edges.
After the Worn Effects had dried for about 30 minutes, I sprayed the last 3 Olive drab Colors in a random pattern, starting with the lightest color.
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1. Next Olive Drab applied over the Worn Effects.
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1. The rest of the olive drabs applied.
After the paint had dried for 30 minutes, I got ready to let Worn Effects work its magic. Worn Effects should come off gradually, simulating paint that is worn away. This is different than chipping fluid, that causes the paint to come off in chunks. I brushed some water on the wings to activate the Worn Effects fluid, then got to work with a stiff brush. The first thing I noticed was that no scrubbing was needed, the paint came off quite readily. It was then that I noticed that the one swipe with a wet brush had actually taken off some of the paint. I hadn't had this happen before with either Tamiya or AK Real Colors, so I'm figuring that the MM paint either needs to dry longer or really is very fragile. I continued carefully, but ended up with several areas that would need some touchup.
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1. Getting ready to brush water on the plane to activate the Worn Effects
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1. This area looks nice and worn, just like I wanted.
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1. Subtle paint scrubbing on leading edges of horizontal & vertical stabilizers.
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1. Oops
2. Notice how one swipe of water pulled up a lot of paint.
After repainting the areas that needed it, I wanted to spray one last effect that I had seen on a couple of photos of X803. It appeared that the left wing had some panels that had either been replaced or repainted. To create the effect, I used Tamiya Olive Drab. I very lightly masked the panels with Tamiya tape, sprayed the panels, then carefully removed the tape. Oops, the paint pulled up in several places. So, reload the airbrush, re-spray, and then don't touch again. I plan to let everything dry for at least 24 hours, then I will go to work on the next effects.
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1. Everything touched up and "new" panels added to left wing.
Everyone stay safe. Cheers
