Leaderboard

I also find this an interesting discussion about the shade of paint. Considering that most of what we model is kept outdoors, I honestly doubt that "scale effect" is really the culprit, although I won't suggest it doesn't existence. Having spend many years on a flight line, paint fades with exposure to sun and weather. In a row of aircraft, each painted the the same FS code, you can easily spot the newer painted aircraft in any color. You could also see where repairs had been made by the splotches of dark paint. Often hatches were cannibalized from other aircraft and they would stand out as differant shades. This was especially true of the birds in Vietnam. They got pretty beaten up. The only time they looked "correct" was straight out of the paint shop and then only for a month or so, until the sun did it's work. Even the grays painted on the tankers and some of the naval aircraft had amazingly different shades.