Ditto what Carl, Spiros and John B. said, George @gblair.

I did a couple of small paint jobs on the Revell model. I have a photo of a plane that painted over the early yellow rings of the roundel on the wings, but the yellow paint still showed through as a shadow. I thought that might be fun to try, so I mixed some Tamiya yellow with some Tamiya clear flat, about 50/50. I then thinned it considerably with some Tamiya thinner. I recently read an article that used this technique to paint a shadow effect. When you thin the paint considerably, there is a chance that it is so thin that it will creep under your masks. So, the idea is you thin the strength of the color by adding clear gloss or flat, then you don't have to add as much thinner to get the same effect. What this allows is more control. It seemed to work well. The other thing I noticed from my photos is that these early planes had square patches of poison gas detecting paint. The idea was that these patches would change color if they came in contact with poison gas. The patches are a yellowish or mustard color. This particular plane had one patch on the right flap and one on the horizontal tail. I masked and painted these using Tamiya paint.

I started scratchbuilding an interior for the upper turret for this plane. It is difficult to find any good photos of what the interior looks like, so I will be imagineering an interior. Both the interior and exterior of the turret are black. Cool.

I also started getting the Italeri ready for painting. This plane doesn't have a turret. It was used in North Africa to haul passengers and cargo. It is painted in the RAF desert scheme. I hope to have it ready for paint by the weekend.

Cheers

3 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Looks excellent so far, my friend @gblair! Great idea indeed to busy up the turret interior.

I wanted to get moving on plane #2, which is the Italeri version of the MPM kit. My first task was to apply the Eduard masks. I have never had problems with Eduard masks before, but I found several mistakes in the instructions. Luckily I caught the mistakes and applied the masks in the correct area. Some of these mis-directions were obvious, while others were a little bit harder to catch. Masking went much more quickly on this plane than on the first one, so I was ready to paint fairly quickly. I was so excited to start painting that I forgot to paint the interior color on the glass before I started on the exterior color. Oh well. I'm not planning to strip the paint, so maybe it won't be too obvious. I have only painted the bottom of the plane, so I should still be able to get all of the glass on the topside of the plane. I used AK Real Color RAF Azure Blue for the base color, then added some "texture" with some slightly darker and slightly lighter versions of the azure blue.

I also spent some time trying to build some structure for the inside of the turret for the first plane (Revell).. When you look at photos of the turret, it is very busy inside. I made some structure that sort of matches the real thing, and I added some structure to the machine guns to make them look a little more correct.

Tomorrow I hope to move forward on the painting of the topside of plane #2, as well as hopefully getting the turret done. Only one of the three models will actually have a turret, so I won't have to repeat the turret interior.

5 attached images. Click to enlarge.

George R Blair Jr (@gblair)
I always enjoy reading your posts. I learn something each time it seems. I especially like the idea of reducing a color with clear, rather than trying to make it look thinner by using, well... thinner. I especially like the ghost effects you have achieved this way.

The scratch built turret interior is cool too. By the looks of things, you are well on your way to start spraying some desert camouflage. I don't know why, but I have always been partial to anything wearing a WW2 desert scheme. Aircraft, armor, vehicles... they all seem to look cool.
Ironically, when I was in the Army, our tanks and other various vehicles were all painted using the modern MERDC camouflage schemes, (or simply in a solid overall desert tan color)... but for some reason it just didn't have the same pizazz. I think you can see the origins of this style of camouflage if you look at some German stuff from the Arika Korps.

Keep it going my friend ! You are on a roll.

A not so often seen mistake from Eduard, glad you caught it in time, George @gblair
Nice work on the turret as well as on the paint work.

Had a lot of errands to run today, but managed to get a little painting done. I first sprayed the interior color over the upper canopies after having forgotten to do it on the lower glass parts. I let it dry a little and then masked the lower blue color. This plane was a little easier to paint, so far. First, the de-icing boots had been removed from the plane. I suspect they did this because they probably wouldn't encounter icing in the desert. I understand all of the rubber boots and associated equipment was quite heavy, so removing them probably improved the range of the plane. The second thing is that the demarcation between the upper and lower colors is a hard, straight line. So it was just a matter of masking straight lines.

I started by painting RAF Middlestone from AK Real Colors, followed by lighter and darker mixes in (hopefully) subtle patterns. The paint went on really smoothly. I plan to let it dry for a while before attacking the camo. We are taking our granddaughter on a steam train that is having a Christmas-themed trip for kids. I am really looking forward to being a train with a 100 little kids (just kidding), but I think it will be fun just to see Christmas through a 3-yeear old's eyes. So, probably no more work till Sunday. Cheers everyone.

2 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Excellent paintwork, George @gblair
That must have been a train packed full with energy, 100 enthusiastics kids all together.