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Underside blue for Saudi/Qatari/Abu Dhabi Hunters?


Ralph

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Hi all,

Am rather taken by the Xtradecal set for a Qatari Hawker Hunter. The decals specify a 'deep sky blue' for the undersides with which I am not familiar, at least not as an RAF colour; does anyone have any good acrylic paint matches for it? Thanks for any guidance!

Cheers R

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I'm sure Mark will be along shortly to confirm, but Hawker used ICI colours on their exports machines to the Middle East. Underside was Deep Sky Blue, ICI ref F407-1813. A good match is PRU Blue. If you wish to mix your own, the RGB for the colour is R:205, G:128, B:168.

 

The topside colours are Brown ICI  F407-1815, Dark Earth being a good match; and Sand ICI F407-1814, which is a strong, deep yellow with an RGB of R:205, G:177 B:45.  Information from Mark, gleaned from the colours on his Qatari machine.

 

Hope this helps! 

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Thanks Paul. It's seems sooooo long ago when we discussed this last!

 

To answer your question Ralph have a look at this thread I posted a while ago for starters as the colour recommendations on decal sheets are often well off the mark - 

Cheers, Mark

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11 hours ago, Paul Bradley said:

Indeed, Mark - ten years this month since the book was published! Where has the time gone...? 

Where indeed?!!!

20 hours ago, Ralph said:

Hi all,

Am rather taken by the Xtradecal set for a Qatari Hawker Hunter. The decals specify a 'deep sky blue' for the undersides with which I am not familiar, at least not as an RAF colour; does anyone have any good acrylic paint matches for it? Thanks for any guidance!

Cheers R

Ralph, further to my reply earlier I've dug out the colour mixes for Tamiya paints that I used for a model of Qatari Hunter QA12 I built some years ago. The colours were matched, as best I could, to the same original components shown in the thread I linked to above. The Tamiya brown isn't perfect, but there was certainly a variation in the original colours (as visible in the photo below) so I wasn't too concerned. Please bear in mind the colours quoted on the Xtradecal sheet are wrong but you can see how confusing these colours can be when you look at this faded photo. (Also, Xtradecal have the 'Sand' ring of the roundel as gold for some reason when it's actually the same Sand as the camo)

tail.jpg

 

Tamiya colour mixes,


Brown - XF-52 Flat Earth straight from the bottle
Sand - 4 parts XF-3 Flat Yellow with 3 parts XF-60 Dark Yellow
Blue - equal parts of X-14 Sky Blue and XF-18 Medium Blue with a spot of white

 

These mixes on my model,

QA12-model.jpg

 

To collect the paint information from my link together here, the excellent Humbrol matches I used straight from the tin are,

 

Sand = Humbrol 225 (Middle Stone)

Brown = Humbrol 29 (Dark Earth)

Deep Sky Blue = Humbrol 109 (WWI Blue)

 

Unfortunately Humbrol only do 29 Dark Earth in their acrylics range (they seem to have ditched 225 and I don't think they ever did 109) but a good acrylic alternative, for the blue at least, is Revell Aqua 50 Light Blue, although I would personally add a tiny smidge of white or very light grey for scale effect.

 

Cheers,

Mark

Edited by StephenMG
Added Humbrol colours to post
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From the link above

 

ICI Sand = BS381C:362 Middle Stone = Humbrol 225 (Middle Stone)

ICI Brown = BS381C:450 Dark Earth = Humbrol 29 (Dark Earth)

ICI Deep Sky Blue = BS381C:175 Light French Blue = Humbrol 109 (WWI Blue)

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7 hours ago, stevehnz said:

@StephenMG I'm guessing those colours would hold good for a Kuwaiti machine too? I don't 'spose you matched them to Humbrol shades? I've got an Airfix kit with Kuwait markings on the sheet I'd like to do sometime. 

Steve.

Yes Steve, good for Kuwaiti Hunters too. In fact any time you see a Hunter in this Brown/Sand/Blue scheme it'll be these colours. The appearance varies massively in photos though, hence the confusion.

 

Those Humbrol codes I quoted are very good matches. Unfortunately Humbrol only do the Dark Earth in acrylics (they seem to have ditched the Middle Stone and never did the WWI Blue) but they are still all in the enamel range.
 

M

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18 minutes ago, StephenMG said:

but they are still all in the enamel range.

Thanks Mark, no problem for me then, I'm a recidivist fume breather from way back. ;) I actually think I have them all. :) 

Steve.

Edited by stevehnz
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Yet another eye watering example of these exotic colours John, but why am I now thinking bad thoughts of modelling both of these British export types??  What else is out there? 

 

Cheers.. Dave

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I don't know for certain John, but they certainly look very similar. The photo you posted looks quite saturated so the colours are very strong but in the photo here (look at photo 3 in the Strikemaster Gallery) https://www.baesystems.com/en/heritage/bac-strikemaster and at the photo you posted a few years back here https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235005846-what-are-the-external-differences-between-a-strikemaster-and-a-jet-provost/&tab=comments#comment-2422788 they look much the same as the Hunter colours, which would make perfect sense as the Hunters and Strikeys were delivered around the same time.

 

It appears the Saudis, Kuwaitis etc. drifted more towards a lighter 'sand' colour (similar to Light Stone) and a paler underside blue later which may also fuel the confusion over the older Hunter colours.

Edited by StephenMG
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Thanks all - very informative, and those Tamiya mixes are just the job. However, very disappointed that the gold in the Xtradecal Qatari hunters is wrong - that was what I liked in the first place! Oh well...

Cheers, R

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9 hours ago, Ralph said:

Thanks all - very informative, and those Tamiya mixes are just the job. However, very disappointed that the gold in the Xtradecal Qatari hunters is wrong - that was what I liked in the first place! Oh well...

Cheers, R

@Ralph don't paint anything yet, I'm about to change my mind!!! I should have been painting the kitchen this afternoon but with all this talk of Qatari Hunters, and as I intend to build a new model of QA12 shortly, I thought I'd revisit my Tamiya colour mixes. While I happy with the Brown and Sand, I thought the mix for the Deep Sky Blue could be better - turns out it could have been a lot better! I thought my original mix was a little dark so I did what I should have done in the first place and got a better original paint sample to test it against. This is an original Qatari link collector which was filthy and had some weird milky build-up on it. I polished the front bit back to the original colour (then ran out of T-Cut so couldn't do any more!) and tried some paint mixes against it.

 Blue-colour-samples-Custom.jpg

 

Turns out that Revell Aqua 50 Light Blue  (top left in this photo) is a pretty good stab at the colour straight from the bottle although it does need lightening a touch for a scale model in my opinion so a 60:40 mix of Light Blue:White should be pretty darn good.

 

As for the Tamiya mixes, mine was indeed too dark. Lightening with white was good but threw the balance of the other colours in the mix off. Oddly the XF-18 has a significant effect when I first put some in but that seemed to lessen when more was added. Anyway to cut a long story short, the best mix to my eye was as follows,

 

X-14 Sky Blue - 6 parts

XF-18 Medium Blue - 1 part

X-3 White - 3 parts (plus a bit more for scale effect to taste)

 

I'm off to finish painting the kitchen before I get into any more trouble! 😀

Edited by StephenMG
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10 minutes ago, Paul Bradley said:

So will the kitchen be sand and brown over deep sky blue? 

I was thinking along similar lines! ... I reckon you could get away with it as well. 

Cheers.. Dave 

 

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