The Little World

The look of this Swiss trainer in RAAF service is a bit daunting – all that colour and complex markings.

Yet, like every paint job in the world, it yields to careful study of individual parts. You just have to mentally look past the complex decals to the basic colours – red, blue and white. Red top, blue underside, white fin. All three are caterd directly from Mr Color bottles – plain Red, JASDF Blue and Base White 1000. The final result will be gloss, so all stages to there can be so, as well.

There is no fading of the red to the blue – this is a graphic, not a camouflage. And fortunately the demarcation line is mostly straight – a stretched piece of masking tape will do it. Equally fortunate is the fact that there are no rivets depicted to pop up into that masking.

But you have to resign yourself to double masking. The red and blue both glow best when over a white undercoat, and not when interfering with one another. So mask the bottom and spray the lighter red paint into it is smooth and glossy. Then wait on tenterhooks for a day while it cures so that you can re-mask and apply the blue. With just the right consistency the blue will sink into the panel lines but leave a ghost of them.

The fin in white is catered for by a decal but you cannot expect it to work well over red – so a mask was cut for the two sides to cover the Base White. Here the Ronin decal makers were brilliant – they provided the colour call-out in exact size – you could measure anything from the flat plan. Wish more printers would do this…