Thanks for the encouragement, everyone!
The painting went pretty smoothly. Instead of using the same method as my A-10W, I shot the first color, MM acrylic Gulf War Army/Marines Sand, and then I masked off with regular masking tape cut with a fresh #11 blade into various rectangles and squares. Then it was just lather,rinse repeat with the following colors (all Tamiya acrylics) Dark Yellow, Flat Earth and Red Brown - they were the colors I had on hand that best matched my desert MARPAT cammies, and it's a really close match to boot.
By the end of it, I had the entire top almost covered in several layers of small bits of tape. I think it took just as long to peel the tape off as the whole painting process! I let the first color coat cure a couple of days, but the rest of it was done over the course of a weekend. The Tamiya paint, thinned with rubbing alcohol went on nice and dried pretty quickly under the lamp on my bench. Overall, I think it's looking pretty good. Hope to have the final touches done and some more photos by the end of this weekend to share.
A day in the Corps is like a day on the farm; every meal is a banquet, every paycheck a fortune, every formation a parade...
The Marine Corps is a department of the Navy? Yeah...The Men's Department.