The Little World

Now before you start writing in to the editor to complain about the appearance of the heading image, let me remind you that I am the editor. And there is nothing wrong with the image – it is a plain and simple Vultee in conservative colours. It’s your eyes that are wrong…

The new target tug model was always going to be a colourful thing – that being the general idea whan you are towing a canvas sleeve in front of inexperienced people supplied with live ammunition.

The experiment this time revolves around the Mr Color lacquer-based acrylic paints. They are stocked in two of our local hobby shops and the range seems quite as wide as the corresponding Mr. Hobby aqueous-based acrylics and the similar offerings from Tamiya. I invested in 6 bottles of colour based upon British fighter and bomber camouflage…as well as their bright yellow to see if it was going to be close to the Humbrol 22 Trainer yellow.

The Vultee has gone together as a basic kit. The cockpit tub fitted with no stress and the minor fuselage discrepancies yielded to putty filling. The tail is square with the wings and the engine cowling fits well. I think it a vast improvement on the Anson that I got from the same firm as my first small-run kit. Had I known the difficulties I would have reversed the order of building.

The Mr Color paints are a little daunting when you open the glass jar – they have no settling or sediment, but are rather thick and syrupy, with a powerful odour. However, when you plate out a suitable dollop and cut it with Mr Color Levelling Thinner 50:50, the result is more what one expects for an airbrush shoot. My colour gun has a 0.3 nozzle.

Note that I also tried another experiment ( here at the Lawrence Liverwurst Laboratories we frequently cross the plasma streams and cut the red wire to the flux capacitor…) with a two-tone priming – white on bottom and grey on top.

Well, the yellow shot a treat – no splatter at 20 psi and even coverage. I was able to do two coats within 10 minutes due to the rapid set up of the paint. Then a half hour in the warm box and it was ready for masking. The black went just as well, and there was minimal overshoot to clean up. I forgot to mask the wheel wells and will have to repaint the zinc chromate…

The top two colours were masked with Micro-Mask – the blue goo that Micro sell in the little plastic bottle. Humbrol Maskol does not seem to cover as well with the lacquer surface, though that may be the old jar of Maskol I have. I’ll get a new one and give it a go later. When I shot the Jungle Green over the blue it all seemed to disappear into one colour…but it was masking well and could be dug out later.

The end result is as good at this stage of the game as anything I have ever done – and better than the earlier attempts with the Brewster Buffalo. The quick set up of the lacquer seems to have excluded any dust lumps or insects.

I can genuinely approach the planes with confidence again…but more of this next post.