flat basecoat keeps soaking up the gloss coat

Never had that issue. What kind of stuff are you using. e.g. Acrylic, laquer, enamel?  Any details would help diagnose your problem

I used model master enamel with an airbrush. It's my first model using an airbrush. The dark ghost gray was kind of powdery so I rubbed it down with tack cloth and a t-shirt, then spray gloss lacquer over that. Put two coats on and still dry and grainy with no shine... Then I tried a pin wash on one of the pylons and it just soaked into the paint or something?

Jesse

I agree that is very odd. It could be that the base coat is still curing? You could try some future or other acrylic like Alclad and see if that stays on top of the base coat.

Thanks for the input. I tried future, a lot of coats on the fuel tanks and it finally started to shine. I just don't want to fill all the detail on the airframe. I did learn that I was spraying tooo far away with the basecoat. It's a learning thing so I guess I will keep spraying til it shines and if the detail is lost I will cry. Spent hours and hours scribing and riveting :(

Jesse

I just had this same problem. Dark Gray on an A-10 and using Future to get to the point of decals. Coat after Coat after Coat. When it was all said and done i think my base coat was junk. I had problems with paint drying in flight, rough surface, etc. The paint on my second is coming much better.

The followup problem that I had was knocking the shine down afterwards with MM flat lacquer. It ended up being more of a satin, but oh well, first one. Learn and have fun. :)

Hmmm. Yeah I got a Badger Velocity and it's stock with the ultra-fine needle and tip. I noticed that I had to spray 2 inches from the model rather than 6 and the outcome was a smooth base coat. Just gonna try to save this one the best I can and move on. It's getting there, fourth coat now and more to come.

Jesse