Luftwaffe experts, I need your opinions.

RLM colours can be a can of worms, but having myself seen original chips I would recommend the following as the closest to the original colours for RLM 74. 75 & 76

Go with the Vallejo model air range with the following colours.

RLM 74  71.054 Dunkelgrau RLM74

RLM 75  71.128 Grauviolett RLM75

RLM 76  71.046 Lichblau RLM76

Vallejo have worked from these original chipsets to produce the paintsand they include "Scale effect" so you can't go far wrong.

The model looks good. Just waiting for someone to produce one in 1/32 that is in my cash range!!

I'd say the 75 is too dark and maybe to violet, and the 74 is a tad too green. Compare to color pics and see where you are at. I usually lighten my gunze 75 a bit.

Brandon, one thing I can input here...when comparing your colors to a paint...be sure to use a light source that's bright and white.  Color is affected by light.  If you look at sodium lights for instance(yellow/orange), they cast a false color onto whatever is in their reach.  So the "blue" you're looking at in one room may look more "violet" in another all depending on the light.  That's at least a good place to start.  Once you get those concepts straightened out...then the idea of how green a RLM should be or what have you can start.

Hope that's of some use.  =]

Heya Brandon. I spend alot of time on Luftwaffe subjects. About the best match I've found so far is the Vallejo Air paints like snapdragon is talking about. Also bvallot has a point with the lighting. Sometimes low level lighting can play tricks on your eyes so make really good and sure your lighting is in the soft white range as opposed to the more "yellow" incandescent bulbs.

Thanks guys, I appreciate all the words of help. I see Vallejo paints are nearly dead on to RLM, but I'm not ready to start buying them just yet. I think since I am not happy with the colors as they lay now I will re-shoot the plane in the basic Gunze paint and be done with it. I will start to look at Vallejo paint for the future but for now I guess I'll tweak it a bit and live with it. I'm just not happy with these colors right now.

There is only one ME-410 on display and that is at RAF cosford.

Here is a link to an excellent walkround

forum.largescalemodeller.com/.../96-messerschmitt-me-410a-1u2

For your information the paintwork is original and gives you an opportunity to see how these are painted.

The undersurface is RLM76

Fuselage is RLM 75 basecoat with a slight overspray mottling of RLM 82

The upper wing surfaces look to be RLM 82/83 splinter pattern up to the wing root.

THe fuselage demarcation line is a high one with the RLM 82 breaking up the line and coming low onto the fuselage. The RLM 82 is a very light spray, just to break up the outline and blend the base coat with the undersurface colour.

The upper wings have the full depth colour splinter pattern.

Luftwaffe ground crews late in the war had a lot of latitude over camo colours and patterns and usually painted the aircraft on the airfield to match the area of operations. Actual RLM chip colours are a good base to go from, but actual colour tones varied from batch to batch and also with the thinning component used.

That 410 is 74/75/76. That was their standard wartime paint. No late war greens/browns.

That page is very useful. I will refer to it when I do another one. This one got 74, 75 and 76 and full on mottle job. She's looking pretty good. Thanks for all the help guys.

Gunze's RLM colors look perfect to my untrained eye.  Of course mine get faded and weathered moderately before its all said and done so I never worry too much about exact matches.  Interesting about Vellejo being dead on.  I've tried their "Air" and found to be too thick for my needs.  It was like trying to airbrush Tempura (poster paint) .

BTW, that looks great Brandon.....

Joe  

I settled down and just went with out of the bottle color and found them close enough for Govt work. I am much happier with the results now that the mottling is down; it ties together better now. Since Tamiya largely doesn't mix RLM colors I'll get used to Gunze colors. Thanks for the kind words gentlemen.