Category: Colour Schemes
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Nieuport 24Bis – Part Three – The Clean Machine
I suspect I could not have used this title two minutes after the ground crew swung the propeller for this French fighter. The exhaust provisions for the rotary engine seem to be two oval holes cut into the lower portion of the engine cowling. Given the castor oil thrown out by the motor plus the…
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Nieuport 24Bis – Part Two – French Silver-Grey
The colour that never stops giving. Or changing, for that matter. The FS-G pot is a standard GSI Creos bottle that possibly started life as a silver. But at some stage of the game a colour call-out asked for a duller shade and some black or grey was dropped into it. Then it got too…
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The Underside
And differences in opinion. Nothing is more striking when looking at aircraft camouflage than the variety of colours and shades that the different air forces used under the Plimsoll line. A glance at any of the Profiles books, a visit to an air museum, or the call-out sheets from any kit maker show colours like…
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Junkers Ju-86 – Part Two – The Four-Part Scheme
You have no idea how hard it was to resist writing ” Four-play “… The horror I experienced painting my first four-part camouflage scheme still exists in my display cabinet – wrapped around a Morane-Saulnier fighter of the French air force in early WW2. I was relying upon a back-of-packet colour call-out and masking fluid.…
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Junkers Ju-86 – Part One – The Lumbering South African
And I am not talking about elephants here… How often do you get to see South Africans flying overhead? Or landing on a local field? Or eating things off your lawn? Those of you who live in Perth know that the chances are quite good – we have seen many South African migrants over the…
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Is It Light Into Dark?
Or the other way around? I can’t remember the correct sequence for mixing custom colours that need several hues or shades in one pot. Do I put light drops into a dark base or vice versa? I ask this because I need a purple for the top of a WW1 German aircraft and there are…
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Canadian Valentine Tank – Part Four – Borden Baby
Or ” The Jolly Green Midget “. Say what you will about the green paint on this Valentine, it is the closest I can get to the distinctive colour on this tank and an adjacent Matilda as they sit in the CFB Borden museum right now. The colour illustrations that show these are taken in…
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Canadian Valentine Tank – Part One – Well You Had Me At…
At Canadian, actually. Anything with a maple syrup glaze. This was not a model I saw in a local shop – it was ordered from the eastern states after a dangerous internet browsing session. It came with another Canadian armoured vehicle, but unfortunately I had not looked closely at the web page – that one…
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Handley Page Heracles – Part Four – Night Flight To Hyderabad
This aircraft model gave two choices of registration – G-AAXC or G-AAXF. I chose the latter – ” Helena ” and noted that it was assigned to eastern flights for Imperial Airways – when there was an empire in the east to fly to. As I intend to do with most 1:144 models in my…
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General Dynamics F111 – Part Three – The Masked Bandit
Every model you build teaches you something – this little one showed me how to conquer the tri-tone scheme. Normally I hate ’em – the Armée de l’Air or USG or Italian three-colour camouflage that looks so cool and takes so much masking and spraying time. I have been known to chicken out more times…
The Little World 