As you maybe remember I started last year a rather big project of no less than four Tachikawa Ki-9 "Akatonbo" (Spruce) trainers. In the meantime, I'm about to finish a couple of experimental projects, so I thought it would be a good time to experiment with various yellows and oranges.
For the overall "trainer yellow/orange", I have written a small piece here. Pretty much the same applies to the IJAAF.
There has been a suggestion that circulates a lot recently, that the IJAAF trainer color was the same with the IFF stripes. In my opinion, it was not.
IFF stripes were yellow/orange (yellow predominant), the IJAAF trainer color was orange/yellow (orange predominant).
In my quest to find appropriate finishes, I tested a few out-of-the-bottle "yellow" and "orange" paints to see how they look on various primers.
Below are the results of the first out-of-the-bottle test.
The Tamiya X-6 "orange" on the white MrHobby Surfacer needed a couple layers to look as it looks in the photo.
On the pink Surfacer, it looked amazing after just one pass.
As you can see, on the gray, mahogany and black surfacers it looks horrible after more than three passes. Four passes on the black and it still looks like this.
In my opinion, it is too "orangy" for IJAAF trainer yellow. It's closer to IJNAF trainer orange and good for Japanese prototype aircraft.
MrColor 58 "orange yellow" & MrColor 109 "character yellow". Exactly the same results with the Tamiya paint. They look very good after a couple passes on a white surfacer, fantastic on a pink surfacer after just one pass and terrible on all other surfacers after multiple passes.
In my opinion, this is a spot-on color for IFF stripes but otherwise, too yellow and bright for IJAAF trainers.
In any case, if you're not crazy about "exact" colors (whatever that's supposed to mean), MrColor 58 and Tamiya X-6, as they are i.e. without any mixes, could pass for IJAAF trainer colors.
After waiting 24 hours, I tried more passes on the dark failed surfacers. Perhaps there could be some difference.
Unfortunately, after multiple passes, there is no real improvement in the gray, mahogany and black surfacers. They still come through the yellow and orange paint and the result looks either too dark or too deep an orange.
In other words, if you want to deepen the top yellow color using a dark primer, you'll get into trouble.
George, you got some interesting results from your experiment. In my railway modelling I've often had to paint vehicles in yellow or orange. For that I've always used a pink primer or undercoat, which really makes the top coat "pop". This method was suggested to me by a friend in my model club who mainly made car models. He also showed me some great techniques for getting the best out of spray cans.
ReplyDeleteGood work, George. Thanks so much for all the time and effort.
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