Hi Gino ; Your 100% correct about the gloss finish on the Helo's , It's something that annoy's me and does take a lot away from the effort I put into each build . I usually airbrush with Gunze Sangyo acrylic's thinned with Isopropyl Alcohol . The colors come out nice and smooth , including the flat color finish but lately I've struggled with the Gunze H-30 clear gloss { It's coming out grainey] and when I airbrush the H-20 clear flat after I have decaled the overall finish not only looks too 'dusty' it actually feels rough on the model surface . Airbrushing the color finish I have no problem doing , It's the clear finish before and after decaling where things don't seem to be working out . I've switched to airbrushing Future [Pledge One-Go here in Australia] prior to decaling and have left the finish at that ... VERY FRUSTRATING .
Anyway I posted a pic of Sky Decals instruction sheet , my recent Blackhawk build was suppose to represent the second from the bottom on the sheet "The Rolling Sword Squadron 1999" , I may have got it wrong but I thought the pic showed the auxiliary fuel tanks fitted , like you say they may have bought them to try but never used them operationaly ???
On the bench now I have two 1/72 Academy IDF/AF AH-64 Apache's , one is ready for masking and airbrushing later today , the second build is ready for the fuselage halves to glue together . I will have to fix my airbrushing problems shortly as the Apache definitly has a overall flat finish .
Kind regards John