Paint session (Finnish Hurricane, Eurofighter and Tornado)

Last Friday there were echoes of a sound not recently heard here in 72Land. It wasn't the thunder – though that was one spectacular lightning storm – it was the sound of a compressor. Something that hasn’t happened in nearly 5 months. I was able to work a small paint session in.

Of course it didn’t proceed painlessly, since I’m definitely a bit out of practice. It was a sort of greatest hits of painting problems. Insufficient thinning caused a bit of spattering from the airbrush tip. The water trap on the compressor seemed rather wonky as well, and resulted in a bit of water exploding through the airbrush. Thankfully, it *appears* that the splattering and water injection levelled out once the items had a chance to thoroughly cure, so a buff-and-repaint is probably not called for. But I will need to see what I can do to avoid a repeat at the next session.

Only three colors were used. I needed to get some White on the underside of one wing, both wing upper surfaces and the fuselage sides on the Finnish Hurricane in delivery markings. After it cured, I applied a series of circular white masks to the upper wings and fuselage. These will protect that White when I spray the Black (wing underside) and top camo colors.

The next was Dark Admiralty Grey to pick up some cockpit items that were missed in the latest Eurofighter (destined for RAF100 markings) and a newly started construction of a Tornado cockpit. This will eventually end up being the markings of one of the three specially painted Tornado retirement aircraft. I’ve already got the Xtradecal sheet that will support this.

Finally, I got the third and final upper camo color on the Ms-406. 

It wasn’t a long session, or even an especially successful one, but it is one step on getting back on the production track. I’ve got 4 doctor appointments in 5 days this week, so it may be the weekend before I can get some other painting done. I certainly have a number of items in the paint queue. Primarily these will be cockpit painting for a MiG-29 and Su-24, along with Blue Angels Yellow wingtips on the A-4 and the lower surface coat of the Macchi Mc-205.

Here’s hoping I can keep the momentum going.