[Kevin WS]

I have been fiddling with a camo repaint, urged in by Herky as well!

I wanted to do a couple of camo repaints - a Rhodesian Aircraft, and two variations on a South African dak.

I have started with the Rhodesian one and (after losing and finding the repaints I started, along with the reference material), I am now back on track.

I have been trying to decide as to whether I should paint the Rhodesian model in "clean" new colours or weathered.

The quandary here is that once the Rhodesian daks were painted, in a very very short time they deteriorated to a faded version - which to be honest is the aircraft everyone saw, knew and photographed. I am tending towards the latter as this is more representative. I do not want to get too fancy - just get a representative look.

Picture 1 below shows 36 after she was refuelled and ready to go - waiting for a mission. The colouring is spot on for the real thing - the faded sandy colouring actually worked well, though it was not intentional. Camo effect was stopped halfway down on this plane -there was quite a bit of variation in the patterns. Also, some variation from older paint showing through so it becoming a real hodge podge!

Picture 2 shows 3 daks on a drop. The middle one has the newest paint, the other two illustrate further degrees of fade and how rapidly the paint deteriorated. The centre one has camo fully down.

Picture 3 shows one in fairly good nick, but still faded. 59I I think. Markings have disappeared.

What I am looking at in terms of the colour is a compromise on the normal service look. I have some actual colour chips for the originals - not that these mean much as the paint types and quality varied so much - the shades were also handed mixed - and this reflected in wide variability in the chips themselves.

In terms of the repaint Picture 4 below shows the factory fresh colour (toned down a bit for scale effect). That was my first effort, but too harsh I feel.

Picture 5 shows the colours I will probably use. Not as faded as the real thing generally was, but an intermediate "fade" on the way from the freshly repainted plane. Don't worry about the poor rivet definition here - was playing with the masks to get the right colour feel.

I think there may be an abandoned one about 3-4 hours drive from me. If I can locate it I plane to go and visit, and take some more pics.