Thanks, guys. I may be busy getting this Falklands War thing set up but I am proceeding systematically with the Buffalo. First, I got the masking done on the fuselage stripe. For what its worth I did this with a number of thin strips to make sure i kept the line vertically straight when following the curves of the fuselage. I always measure the distance of the line edge to the nearest panel lines as I go to confirm.

All MM Acryl paints today. I really like these, even if they clog my airbrush and require mid session cleaning. They go on very smooth and even and allow for removal of trapped lint when dry. Somehow the lint floats up to the surface and can be buffed off carefully later on with a sanding stick or picked off with tweezers or tape. I decided to do the panel line pre-shading top and bottom with Semi-Gloss Black and go right into roughing out the port side in SG Black as well. I did the starboard side in the beautiful shade of Duck Egg Blue that I think MM Acryl has perfected. I will do some touch ups tomorrow (mainly in the wheel wells) and mask off the demarcation line down to centre to respray with SG Black on the starboard side. So far so good.

Beautiful paint job, Colin.
The shading is indeed spot on.

Thanks, Spiros, John and George. I have made some more progress on the painting today. First off was masking the center line, being super careful around the engine inlets. Lots of poking with toothpicks and pulling with tweezers to get the masking over the engine reseated and prevent overspray.

I laid on the semi-gloss black and an pleased with the smoothness.

No preshading anymore, of course but I may do a dark gray panel line highlighting later. I also wanted to share the first step of the camo masking. I first drew the camo lines on the wings and then traced them out on the very thin paper from a large decal cover sheet. Just like tracing paper but less delicate. These I will hold in reserve for cutting paper masks later on. Finally I sprayed the prop blades and attempted to mask the sky part while getting the blades to the base. I oversprayed a bit in places and will have to repaint the sky after masking the blades and before prepping for the Dark Earth spinner segment.

That's it for today. Hope this is interesting for you.

Colin, @coling
You have done a magnificent job with spraying the black underside. The Duck Egg Blue looks equally impressive, with just the right amount of pre shading showing through. This is something that is actually quite hard to do... I might not always comment on here regularly, but you can rest assured that I am following your build with a lot of interest.

Thanks for posting another great update.

Very impressive paint job, my friend @coling!
Looking forward to your top masking approach, and taking notes also, as to help me in my Victor's dead hard lined camo!

That was some nice paint updates Colin. It sure will look great with the half black.

Thank you, gentlemen, for your kind comments. I am always happy to share "tips," especially since this build is presenting some particular challenges. Like you, George, I think the Buffalo is really cool. I think it was a good design for its time and a rather handsome aircraft, especially in the RAF, Dutch and Finnish versions. I plan to do more of each version at some point. As for this build, a few more challenges came up this week and I have been adjusting accordingly. My enthusiasm for Model Master Semi-Gloss Black has waned. First off, when I removed the masks for the center line color division, the thinned black thin paint had leaked under the mask and left some ugly marks.

I decided to start masking each wing for the topside Dark Earth before repairing the center line - this would guard against overspray on the repair. I then discovered that the same black paint was very fragile and lifted off from the wing in chunks with Tamiya tape. Here is how it looked with chunks off the wing edge. To redo the center line and wings I knew I had to at least partially sand off the weak black paint and redo it with Tamiya. I decided to sand the wing edge and cover the gaps with Tamiya Flat Black and Tamiya Clear. This looked OK as repaired. Meanwhile I simply airbrushed Tamiya Clear over the original MM paint on the fuselage centre line before masking over the black and redoing the Duck Egg Blue. I also coated the rest of the black lower wing area with Clear and hoped for the best with further masking. Success. The center line looked good in the end and nothing lifted. Not so perfect with the further masking though. I did most of it with paper and only the edges with Tamiya tape. For the rear fuselage, I avoided tape altogether and tacked down the paper with Silly Putty - the gentlest thing I know to cover fragile paint without lifting it (I never use Blue Tack, which I find leaves marks on acrylic flat paint). I think most of the masks will be OK but I know I will have more painting to do on parts of the outer wing that have already lifted . You can see the new paint loss in this pic from tape use. Isolated underside repairs are doable, just so long as the center line stays undamaged and no tape will touch that.

So, today I airbrushed on the Gunze Dark Earth. This is the smoothest I have ever gotten Gunze paint using Tamiya thinner and Acrylic Retarder. It is quite transparent though (much more than I expected), so I will do a second coat here and there after the first has dried.

I tested out my new Gunze mix on a scrap of plastic earlier this week and I know it dries super hard. There should be no danger of it lifting with masks, even with the MM black underneath as a pre-shade. The pre-shade shines through quite nicely, don't you think? I will try use a mix of paper and Silly Putty masks on top before I spray the Dark Green. since I can anchor them to the paper masks underneath, I should be able to use mainly paper, which I prefer. The fuselage may need the Putty strips because of its complex curves.

So that's it. I was a bit discouraged about the lifted paint but I can handle it. I like the colors so far. I hope to get major painting done early in the week before the post shading and oil wash stage. Comments welcome.