Airbrush momentum continues - at a cost

The airbrush was less cooperative than it has been, and I am beginning to wonder if the current problem is related to the needle. When I shoot pure thinner through it to clean it out, you can see that the spray is only coming out on the right half of the arc, not across the full range that it should be. Maybe the needle, or even the nosepiece, is bent? Not sure what the root cause is, but the symptom still seems to be that paint is not being pushed through the airbrush in sufficient volume to paint the intended surface.

I do my standard thinning. Not much goes through the brush, so I try some additional thinning of the paint. Eventually, I can see it exiting the brush, but it is as if I am spraying pure thinner; there is no color on the model. Sometimes I can temporarily improve the flow by holding a finger over the nosecap and backspraying into the paint cup. But in a few seconds I am back to square one. It looks like my next purchase will have to be some new airbrush parts. Insert grumbling sound bite here.

Eventually I got all of tonight's victims painted, but the surface quality varied widely. In some cases there was sputtering and too little coverage. So it is likely that most of these will have to be buffed out and a surface coat (which at least is overthinned intentionally, to fill in the imperfections and get me back to a true gloss coat) will be necessary.

I don't think I'll need to respray the Eurofighter noses. Upon reflection, Medium Sea Grey may be a tad too dark, but the paint seems to have applied well enough. The Dark Green coat on the uppers of the two Spitfire 1s will definitely need to be buffed and resprayed. Not sure about the upper surfaces of the Fieseler Fi-103X; I'll have to re-examine them when the paint cures. And of course the Hurricane needs its Sky undersides repaired and its uppers buffed and resurfaced. But at least I can amuse myself with hours of decalling the X-47. That thing has a lot of markings, most of which are teeny walkway lines that are just waiting to fold or break when on their way from backing sheet to model.

I haven't been very successful in finding all the pieces of my photo setup from before the Great House Refresh of 2015. The camera and tripod were fairly easy, but the table I used and the large backdrop - really just a poster sized piece of white heavy cardstock - appear to have vanished, or perhaps been eaten by a particularly ambitious Carpet Monster. I may have to shoot the first couple of completions against a basic table background if I am going to get them posted before Wednesday.