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OA-4M color help


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Hey all,

 

So I have been building a 1/72 Fujimi OA-4M and a A-4M as well. I am doing both of them as lo-viz and using the Furball lo-viz Devil Dog decals. I got everything painted and was all excited to start adding the decals and then to my horror as I added my first decal it blended in with the paint. The image below has the national insignia added to the speed brake as you can see, or not see, that it blended in with the surrounding Dark Compass Gray.

 

 

OA-4M.jpg.78970730af2f2a17fdf999090a1dba9c.jpg

 

This is the aircraft I am trying to build.

 

Douglas_OA-4M_MAG-12_1989.jpg.9d5136b6979ad7d1120e8e05b8803127.jpg

 

I know the debate and questions around the right paint to use and the different variations of 36320 depending on manufactures.  I used AMMO by Mig which from what I thought I saw in another thread was a good representation of 36320. So my questions are:

 

1. Decals. I don't questions the decals I perceive these to be correct. The lo-viz sheet has quite a few different gray schemes, but I assume I got the correct color based off of airframe specific markings. I'm wondering if anyone else has used these decals and what paint they may have used to work?

 

2. I know these marking should look lighter than the surrounding gray paint, but that also makes me think that if right now the decals and the paint are pretty much matching which way should I go with paint? I assume darker to make the decals appear to look lighter, but am not sure the best route? Should I try adding some blue or try even a different color gray all together?

 

So maybe some of our experts out there can help me. I really hate the thought of having to re-paint the models, but I assume that is my only choice. I just hope you guys can help me find the best solution. I know I saw an awesome 1/48 build of the Hasegawa kit converted into the OA-4 and it was in the same markings and looked great, but I can't find it again. I think it was someone from ARC, but was hoping I could find it and get his input on the paint he used.

 

I really appreciate any and all input guys! Thanks for all the knowledge you can share.

 

 

 

 

 

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You could try a technique called "post shading".  ie,  adding the weathering and panel line details AFTER you've already painted the main color.   You may want to try it first on a spare plastic with spare decals of the same color.  Lightly 'misting' certain panels of the airframe will also help ( depending on whether you want a darker or lighter shade, try a few drops of white or dark gray/black to the base color of 36320)

 

Also, as you have already surmised, you may need to make the color darker in order to make the lighter decal stand out.  Like what Doog did with his fantastic Skyhawk (although I believe he used a technique called 'Black basing'...which might be a bit too late in your case since you have already painted the main color)

https://doogsmodels.com/completed-builds/completed-builds-aircraft/completed-builds-148-aircraft/douglas-a-4f-skyhawk/

See pages 2-5 in his build up:

https://doogsmodels.smugmug.com/48Aircraft/148-Hasegawa-A4F-Skyhawk/i-CN2MZVg

 

More of his black-basing:

https://doogsmodels.com/2014/07/03/technique-black-basing/

Good stuff!

 

By the way, I think the Hasegawa conversion that you are looking for was by Craig Sargent:

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/hyperscale/hasegawa-1-48-oa-4m-skyhawk-conversion-t50447.html

https://www.facebook.com/FurballAeroDesign/posts/craig-sargent-converted-the-148-hasegawa-ta-4j-into-this-wicked-usmc-oa-4m-he-us/1104872982943793/

I do believe he posts here on ARC.

There are a couple of his pre-shading pics of that particular Hasegawa OA-4M conversion over at Z-5.  Do a Google search with his name and "OA-4M".  You'll find it. :thumbsup:

 

 

Edited by JackMan
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How does the Tail code stand out against the lighter 36375?

 

I would probably look at adding 35237 to the 36320 in order to give it just enough contrast with the 36375. 

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Thanks Jackman! I already had done some post shading, but it apparently wasn't enough. Thank for the links as well. I did some black pre shading, but I have not tried those techniques used in the video.

 

Yes, it was Craig Sargent's Skyhawk that I was looking for. Thank you for the links!

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1 hour ago, scotthldr said:

How does the Tail code stand out against the lighter 36375?

 

I would probably look at adding 35237 to the 36320 in order to give it just enough contrast with the 36375. 

I haven't tried putting any other decals on yet. Once I put that first one on I stopped, realizing that I will probably have to repaint as well. I am going to ry some different mixes on a scrap piece of plastic and then try some of the decals against that and see what I get.

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58 minutes ago, seawinder said:

Are you sure you used the right insignia decal? It probably wants to be the lightest one on the sheet.

That was one of my first thoughts as well, but some of the airframe specific decals are the same colors, so I believe I got the right ones. That is the tricky things with some of these new sheets is that there is no reference numbers to help and when the whole sheet is different shades of gray. There are some lighter decals for the general marking, but my airframe specific ones will still be my issue if I use them.

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I’ve experienced the same issue with low-viz markings. It would be helpful if the decal manufacturers would suggest commercial paints that are compatible with their decal colors. They seem to be all over the map. At this stage if it were me, I’d experiment with some other paint brands until you find the right combination. As distasteful as it seems, a full repaint might be the answer. In the end, you might be happier with the finished product. This issue really is a dilemma since the various paints have so much variability. Best of luck.

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1 hour ago, RCarlson said:

That was one of my first thoughts as well, but some of the airframe specific decals are the same colors, so I believe I got the right ones. That is the tricky things with some of these new sheets is that there is no reference numbers to help and when the whole sheet is different shades of gray. There are some lighter decals for the general marking, but my airframe specific ones will still be my issue if I use them.

I don't think that's true. Looking at the photo above, the national insignia is clearly a lighter color than the codes on the tail. I believe there are/were policies for step-up/step-down colors depending on the surface colors underneath the markings. If your decal is disappearing into the surrounding surface color, than it need to be either a step up (lighter) or down (darker).

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2 hours ago, BillS said:

I’ve experienced the same issue with low-viz markings. It would be helpful if the decal manufacturers would suggest commercial paints that are compatible with their decal colors. They seem to be all over the map. At this stage if it were me, I’d experiment with some other paint brands until you find the right combination. As distasteful as it seems, a full repaint might be the answer. In the end, you might be happier with the finished product. This issue really is a dilemma since the various paints have so much variability. Best of luck.

Yeah I am in the process now of airbrushing the different manufacturers and some color variations of those on to some scrap pieces and will try some of the extra decals on them. I should have done this in the start and now it looks like I will pay for it. Thanks!

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From the Mil-Std-2161A

 

Quote

 

5.2.3.2.1 Tactical paint scheme - general marking policy.

 

Tactical paint schemes are comprised of either two or three shades of gray. If the tactical paint scheme is comprised of only two colors, the contrasting color specified is the color used in the scheme which is not located in the area where the marking is applied. This requirement applies except when the two colors used in the scheme are FED-STD-595, color numbers 36320 and 36375. In this case, all markings will be applied in FED-STD-595, color number 35237. If the tactical paint scheme is comprised of three colors, the following guidelines apply:

 

a. If the background color is the darkest gray, medium gray is used for the marking.

 

b. If the background color is the medium gray, the darkest gray is used for the marking.

 

c. If the background color is the lightest gray, the medium gray is used for the marking.

 

 

In the case of the OA-4M, it was a three gray scheme so the markings in the darkest gray area (36320) would be 36375, the markings in the medium gray area (36375) would be 36320 and the markings in the lightest gray area (36495) would be 36375. So you would have two different color markings on the same aircraft, it just depended where on the aircraft the markings were located at.

 

36320 - Dark Ghost Gray (the darkest gray)

36375 - Light Ghost Gray (the medium gray)

36495 - Light Gray (the lightest gray)

 

I use Model Master enamels and have the Furball sheet, if you use the lightest Star n Bar (3 center ones in the cluster) they will stand out against the 36320. Use those three Star n Bar's for the side and top wing markings, the Star and Bar on the far right of the cluster is the one you would use for the bottom wing.

 

hth

GW

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1 hour ago, seawinder said:

I don't think that's true. Looking at the photo above, the national insignia is clearly a lighter color than the codes on the tail. I believe there are/were policies for step-up/step-down colors depending on the surface colors underneath the markings. If your decal is disappearing into the surrounding surface color, than it need to be either a step up (lighter) or down (darker).

Yeah I am starting to lean towards the lighter color decals that are on the sheet. This 50 shades of gray is killing me!

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12 minutes ago, GW8345 said:

From the Mil-Std-2161A

 

 

In the case of the OA-4M, it was a three gray scheme so the markings in the darkest gray area (36320) would be 36375, the markings in the medium gray area (36375) would be 36320 and the markings in the lightest gray area (36495) would be 36375. So you would have two different color markings on the same aircraft, it just depended where on the aircraft the markings were located at.

 

36320 - Dark Ghost Gray (the darkest gray)

36375 - Light Ghost Gray (the medium gray)

36495 - Light Gray (the lightest gray)

 

I use Model Master enamels and have the Furball sheet, if you use the lightest Star n Bar (3 center ones in the cluster) they will stand out against the 36320. Use those three Star n Bar's for the side and top wing markings, the Star and Bar on the far right of the cluster is the one you would use for the bottom wing.

 

hth

GW

Thanks GW! That helps a lot, but am I correct in that it says that 36375 which would be the medium gray would be used on 36320 which is what I used. I could be wrong, everything is starting to blend together anymore. You stated to use the lightest Star n Bar that is in the center of the sheet (the three that are in the bottom center, correct?) which I believe will be correct and look the best, but these are the lightest colored one so wouldn't that make them 36495?

 

I'm glad I choose a relaxing hobby to keep me sane!

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8 hours ago, RCarlson said:

Thanks GW! That helps a lot, but am I correct in that it says that 36375 which would be the medium gray would be used on 36320 which is what I used. I could be wrong, everything is starting to blend together anymore. You stated to use the lightest Star n Bar that is in the center of the sheet (the three that are in the bottom center, correct?) which I believe will be correct and look the best, but these are the lightest colored one so wouldn't that make them 36495?

 

I'm glad I choose a relaxing hobby to keep me sane!

The three center Stars N Bars are 36375, there are no markings that are 36495.

 

The markings on the sheet are 36375, 36320 and black.

 

I know what you mean, took me a while to figure out the requirements in the manual, and I do that stuff for a living!

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6 hours ago, GW8345 said:

The three center Stars N Bars are 36375, there are no markings that are 36495.

 

The markings on the sheet are 36375, 36320 and black.

 

I know what you mean, took me a while to figure out the requirements in the manual, and I do that stuff for a living!

Might be my eyes, but it sure looks like there is Star and Bars ,Danger Jet Intake and common data in 3 shades of Grey,  as well as Black and another in Grey and Black?

Edited by scotthldr
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26 minutes ago, scotthldr said:

Might be my eyes, but it sure looks like there is Star and Bars ,Danger Jet Intake and common data in 3 shades of Grey,  as well as Black and another in Grey and Black?

You're right, there are some markings that are darker than 36320 Dark Ghost Grey, looks to me that they are 36118 Gunship Gray.

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That is what really is confusing with these marking is that there is quite a bit of variation in them and not a lot of reference help. I really wished that decal makers would separate them out a little more and give some more reference to help.

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I would've thought that it would be 35237, 36320 and 36375, going by the scheme for VMFA-211 '159780', 1989.

 

The lightest decals look to be for A-4F '155028' VMA-142.

Edited by scotthldr
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2 hours ago, scotthldr said:

I would've thought that it would be 35237, 36320 and 36375, going by the scheme for VMFA-311 '159780', 1989.

 

The lightest decals look to be for A-4F '155028' VMA-142.

I believe you're right.

 

Dang, time for stronger reading glasses.

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11 hours ago, scotthldr said:

I would've thought that it would be 35237, 36320 and 36375, going by the scheme for VMFA-311 '159780', 1989.

That doesn't sound right at all. Standard colors for the lo-vis tactical scheme on A-4M and OA-4M were:

FS36495 on the underside

FS36375 on the sides of the fuselage and periphery of the wing

FS36320 on the top of the fuselage and center of the wing.

 

35237 is a dark blue-grey, used during this period in the gray/black/green scheme on Marine helicopters and OV-10s.  It *may* have been the darker gray used on H&MS-32/MALS-32's one-off medium-gray/green jet "04" (not the dark gray/green jet "01", Harrier colors were used on that one), but I am not certain.  I think "04" used 36320 for the uppersurface gray, and it just looked darker due to the green stripes, but it may have been 35237.

 

Anyway, an A-4 with 35237/36320/36375 would have had 36375 on the belly, 36320 on the sides and 35237 on the top and looked *very* dark compared to a standard A-4.

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I never said the TPS on A-4’s consisted of 35237, 36320, 36375 as we know that isn’t true. What I said was that the darker Grey markings on the VMFA-211 ‘159780’ were more than likely 35237, which is the same colour applied on the upper surfaces of the F-14 TPS.

 

There would no requirement for Star and Bar decals to be finished wholly in 36320 either( the larger ones are split 375 over 320).

Edited by scotthldr
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Apologies, Scott, I misread what you were saying.  And yes, I agree, for those VMA-211 markings from 1989 they were doing something different from "normal".  Here's a different airframe, but same scheme, taken at Iwakuni almost certainly in May, 1989 - I went over with VMA-331 that year to relieve 211, they were the last Skyhawk squadron deployed to Japan, 331 was the first AV-8B squadron deployed, and this pic is clearly from the Iwakuni Friendship Day which has always been in early May every year: 

 

https://twitter.com/T_fighter/status/1216706729825595399/photo/1

 

This was something applied locally, as that is a fresh coat of paint, and in '86 they had "normal" markings with 36375 over 36320, or 36320 when over 36375:

 

https://www.aviationphotocompany.com/p973745392/h8954C500#h8954c500

 

Still the same black unit codes, though.

 

As far as concerns the colors for national insignia and warnings of their 1989 scheme, though, I would guesstimate 36231, not 35237.  While I don't have firsthand knowledge of how 211 painted their birds, I do know what was at Iwakuni, I worked in airframes (who are the folks doing painting, when it needed to be done), and the paints we had were those that were authorized for the aircraft at the base.  35237 was, at the time, a helo/OV-10 color. It was not normally used on other Marine fixed-wing assets.  They would have had gallons of it in Okinawa, naturally, but I doubt that it would have been readily available at Iwakuni.  36231, though, likely would have been available.

 

Anyway, to the OA-4M RCarlson is asking about: all of the MALS-12 OA-4Ms were painted in "reg" colors: the stars and bars on the speed brakes and port upper wing, "Marines" text on fuselage and wing, intake and seat warnings were 36375 against the 36320 base color.  BuNo and exhaust warnings were 36320 against the 36375 base color of the majority of the tail. The WA tail codes were either 36320 as in RCarlson's pic, or 36495 as can be seen on the tail of the OA-4M parked just behind the 211 A-4M in the pic from Iwakuni.  I saw all of MALS-12s OA-4Ms on a regular basis, and they didn't do anything out of the ordinary on them, unlike MALS-32 (which I also worked at) with their two oddball schemes.

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Thanks for jumping in Lance and for the information.

 

Ok, so I tried some experimenting with the decals and with the paint. So for the decals it appears that there are 3 shades of gray, black and then a greenish hued one for the non-standard camouflaged H&MS-32 planes. For this example I am only focusing on the black/gray ones.

starbars2.jpg.f18af4238bc7c187da8be313fe7e207c.jpg

 

So from what I gather from these going from top to bottom.

 

1. Black

2. Darkest Gray 36231/35327?

3. Medium Gray 36320?

4. Lightest Gray 36375?

 

Does this sound correct?

 

My next experiment was with the different paints I have.

 

colormatch.jpg.076b4a92de2b8bcf8de94ebaae48bf33.jpg

 

I added the Medium Gray decals which are the darker ones on the bottom and the Lightest Ones which are on the top. I used the Ammo Paints on my model so then I did this experiment. Please forgive the messiness.

 

colormatch1.jpg.5c0e01f7d38dfb1f0c5a0939a9f9a4e6.jpg

 

I didn't use the lightest color Star n Bars here because I may need them for my build and there are only 3 of them, but I used a decal which are the same color. Which poses my question and the biggest issue that I am having. The lightest decals appear to be a lighter color than the standard markings and the best example to use. One of the airframes I was going to do is the VMA-131 'Diamondbacks" markings. This aircraft uses a lighter shape of gray for it's squadron markings and which is also the lightest shade of gray that comes on the decal sheet. The common markings are then one step up which would mean the Medium Gray markings on this sheet. But those appear to be 36320 which then gets lost in the paint.

 

So therein lies the question. Are my assumptions above correct? In my experiment with the different manufactures of 36320 only the Lightest Gray decals show up as appearing like the real plane. It's not until I used a much darker color that the Medium Gray decals appear as lighter than the base color, but that gray is way to dark for the airframe.

 

I could be way off on what my assumptions are and maybe I screwed up somewhere so that is why I'm turning to everyone's advice here. I've seen these decals used to the effect that I am trying to achieve such as Craig Sargent's build linked above. There was even a recent issue of Scale Aviation Modeller International that just had the VMA-131 jet as I spoke about above and everything seems to work out on it. So I don't know if I am screwing up somewhere or looking at this wrong, but I can't get the math to add up.

 

Again, thank you everyone for reading through this and all the input everyone has. I really appreciate the assistance. 

  

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The lightest Grey for the small Star and Bar cannot be 36375, as if you look at the split colour large Star and Bars they are split 375 over 320. This would suggest to me that the lightest grey on the sheet is 36495, we can see this also on the colour profiles within the sheet. Therefore you need to match the small Star and Bar to the top colour of the large Star and Bar if that makes sense to get your 36375

 

I'm starting to think that someone at the print shop has made a boo boo, as the picture you have of the 4 Star and Bars together looks nothing like the picture I'm looking at on the net, are you able to take a picture of the complete decal sheet as I'm looking at images on the Furball website and something doesn't add up.

 

Looking at your paint swatches the Ammo 36320 looks too light, with Vallejo looking the closest.

Edited by scotthldr
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