Seems like spray paint is a lot better than it used to be!

Could be...I was impressed how well the paint leveled itself. 

Part of the improvement is the years of your learning curve.

Appliance paint is really durable.

Looks good to me.  I recently used some gloss black paint from a rattle-can on a 1/72 BAE Hawk T1 (after a disappointing result from my airbrush, which was entirely down to me) and it came out just fine.  I have a couple of large-ish projects coming up which will need a lot of gloss white, so I've invested in a nice big can of Appliance White Gloss.