Hard edged camo versus soft edged?

mike, i have a Bf109 coming up and from what i can gather, the upper splinter cammo is sometimes a hard edge, but the fuselage sides are very soft. if you can get a nice, tight, fine line and your aim is good with an airbrush, you can get close in and nearly mimic a hard edge. going slow enough to cover on the first pass and holding the brush steady is the most difficult part of achieving such lines though.

RAF birds were definetly hard edged. from what i gather, they used rubber mats to mask with in real life, and had templates for each type of bird. thats why all the cammo schemes on a spitfire are nearly identical. and then again, its your preference too. i like the soft edge myself, but if i'm going to model a certain subject and want to capture the realism, i'll do whatever to make it look as close as the real thing as possible. i'm just beginning to really build seriously, so i'm still in the experimental stage. later.

On Luftwaffe fighters...the splinter pattern on the upper wing surfaces including the elevators is hard edged and sharp. On the fuselage it is soft, mottled and feathered except for some late model varients. The demarcation line between the lower surfaces are both hard edged and soft, find some reference if you wanna be particular.

Raf is all hard edge, camo and demarcation to the bottom color.

http://hem.passagen.se/galland/
here is some good examples of some german planes from wwII

This question gets bandied about from time to time. One thing to keep in mind is the difference in scale. On a 1/48 scale plane if we have a demarcation that's 1/16" wide on the real bird that would be 3" wide. A guy with a spray gun can keep an edge to well under an inch without masking or a mat, and a guy with a big paint brush can keep it at basically zero. We can't match that on models.

I've seen pictures of the camo being applied with those rubber mats, and I've seen pictures of it being applied without them. When I was building a Spitfire I sent an email to someone at the Spitfire Emporium and asked the same question. I was told that it was all soft-edged camo on the Spits.

I think the chances are that at the factory, especially pre-war, the camo may have been applied using the pre-cut mats. Battle damage repairs in the field, and when they were were worried more about getting them out of the plant than a pretty paint job, I suspect were painted however they could do it quickly.

I've noticed over the years of looking at photos that British planes tended to have, as you said, hard edges on all divisions until they got to the field. However, they always seem to have a hard edge between upper surfaces and underside colors, especially ahead of the wings. On Luftwaffe birds, find a bunch of photos and look at the splinter schemes beginning with Condor Legion in Spanish Civil War and chronologically to the end of the war. Those dividing lines went from totally hard to more and more soft at the end of the war. Just look at a 109C and a 109K. The same with an early FW-190A to the Dora 9 and 12. I wish I still had the old Monogram Publishing Guide to Painting Luftwaffe Aircraft. It had paint chips as well as answering these very questions. Unfortunately, it's been out of print for years and I don't know why Monogram doesn't bring it back out. I'll bet the demand is there. It came in a three ring binder so I could keep related research materials in it. But it was expensive, 50-odd dollars back in '87, when I bought one of the last copies in stock.

Roger... thanks guys! I am basically building up Priller's 190A8 as it appeared on D-Day when he was strafing the beaches. Between a profile I found online, Pix's model of Priller's 190 that he posted a ways back, and the kit instructions, I think I came pretty close to pulling it off...not bad for my second airbrush job I guess I basically cut the basic pattern out of masking tape for the fuselage sides where the Hellblau and Grauviolett meet- kind of haphazardly stuck it on there- and came up with a mix of hard/soft edge that I am pleased with LOL Now for the wing tops...

The fuselage is always the hardest for me so I usually start on the wing tops (actually I usually start on the bottom since that's usually one color )

Show us some pix! We want to see pix!!!

Hit the link, go down to profiles (in big letters ) then scroll down to Priller. They have a colored profile of his 190 here.

http://hem.passagen.se/galland/

MusicCity... Pics will come as soon as I can buy more batteries for my crappy completely outdated digital camera That's definitely something I am asking for for Christmas this year...

woodbeck-- thanks for the link, but that's for his A5...I am doing up his A8...although it does seem to be a very similar scheme. Either way...the link is bookmarked

QUOTE: Originally posted by Jeeves MusicCity... Pics will come as soon as I can buy more batteries for my crappy completely outdated digital camera That's definitely something I am asking for for Christmas this year...

Well, just send me the model and I'll take some pix for you