Soviet aircraft silver panels

[wavodavo]

Whats the best variety of silver paint to use for different panel colours of bare metal Soviet aircraft? I use Vallejo Air aluminium, silver and high speed silver but there does not seem to be any difference in the shades.

 

Dave

[bentwaters81tfw]

Soviet aircraft were not NMF, they were sprayed with a silver lacquer.

[Giorgio N]

Strange that there's no difference in shade, are you shaking the bottles vigorously ? Not mixing the paint as needed may be a reason for this.

I have used these paints often and I see that Aluminum is the lightest, Silver is slightly darker and a bit shinier, Chrome even darker while Steel has a different tinge (slightly bluer). When applied on a model I can see the difference between these. If even with well shaken paint you see no difference, then the only solution is to add varying amounts of a darker paint to increase the difference. Their gun metal can work for this of course, just be careful that very little can darken the paint quite a lot. For certain panels it may be worth to add traces of other colours too, as some can take a bluish appearance or even a brownish one.

 

Now for Soviet types as they were not left in natural metal the difference in colour among different panels was not as accentuated as in say USAF types of the '50s. Stronger differences will be seen on retired types as panels of different alloys would have oxidized differently but for an aircraft in service the differences will be mostly minimal. Since these surfaces were painted, they also lacked a high shine finish. Best way to reproduce this is to spray over the metallics a coat of semigloss varnish. Personally I use a mix of Vallejo's own gloss and satin clears, with more or less gloss depending on the finish I want to represent. A 10-50 mix works pretty well to reproduce a silver painted finish, as some of these aircraft were painted with a mix of clear paint and aluminum paste this may be slighty glossier.