primer

Are you working in plastic, resin, or brass for these small parts? If in plastic, no priming is necessary after cleaning off the mold release agent as you describe. Airbrushing thin coats will save your relief detail. Brass and resin should be primed after the cleaning. Again I would suggest thin airbrushed coats of primer and paint to keep that detail.

I wouldn't worry too much about priming in a case like that.  Even for PE parts, priming is not really necessary.  While it is true that paint-primer-PE may be a more rugged finish than paint directly on PE,  it's not as though your delicate PE parts inside the cockpit are subject to a lot of handling. 

The main exception would be if your final color is one that does not cover well, you may well be better off to base coat, prime if you will, with a light color.  In that case it's better to have two coats of paint, basecoat + colorcoat, than to have several color coats.  The only color I have a problem with are yellows, so I'll always basecoat with flat white prior to painting yellow.  Some zinc chromate greens are rather yellow, so they may not cover well either.  Just see how it goes.

Hi Stikpusher - Thanks alot for your helpful input.  Yes - I'm building in plastic and I'll make sure its cleaned real good.  Les

Hi Abarne - I thank you for your input as well.  I was just concerned with the small parts.  The wings, etc.  will be primed   I have MM in light gray for the primer.   Thanks again   Les

Abarne

I know what you mean about yellows! a pain in the rump! But I tried priming with yellow zinc chromate on a recent build and got great results.

stikpusher wrote:

I know what you mean about yellows! a pain in the rump!

What I find so weird about yellow, is that even white covers better.  When painting yellow, such as on prop tips, if I go straight over the base coat, I have to make a million (only a slight exaggeration) mist coats to get even coverage.  Or I can first hit it with flat white, usually with one fairly light coat (flat white actually covers quite well), followed by a yellow coat and it's done.  I guess it's a matter of learning what colors work.

Andy