Fantastic news everyone!

My friends! Today was all about testing. I sorted the photos from the final result back to the initial attempts, so in reverse order 😊 But I'll talk about them chronologically, so here goes.

No matter what I tried, I just couldn't spray the MMP colors the way I wanted (i.e. normal smooth transitions). They're also extremely transparent and it takes like 10 layers to build them up properly, which is a total nightmare with this amount of sputtering. Also, is it just me, or are these colors like, totally off? The Dark Yellow is okay, the whole test model was sprayed with it, although I added about a drop or two of white to make it lighter, but it went down in a nice, smooth coat. However the Resedagreen is just... uh! Their Olive Green on the other hand is very dark. The Red Brown is quite okay imo, but again the second variant of their brown is almost black. Result: I won't use them for the camo, no matter how much I'd like to. I'm only gonna use their Oxide Primer and Dark Yellow for the base coat (oxide red on the lower hull and where side skirts were, and dark yellow+ white as the base).

So, defeated, I switched to Tamiya paints. My initial attempts were much better than MMP, but there was still the same amount of sputtering just like on the Crusader. So I gave my friend a call, he's really good with airbrushing, and he told me to use a LOT of clear varnish and drying retarder. Unfortunately I don't have retarder for Tamiya paints, but I have clear varnish! So I added a TON of it into both mixtures and this made them spray MUCH smoother. It still wasn't as good as I'd want so I disassembled the entire airbrush and gave it a thorough clean. The green paint then sprayed almost perfectly (I think the remaining few % to make the transitions perfect is just lack of practice). 

Very happy with the result I mixed a red brown and went all in. Here I noticed the sputter was slightly heavier, so I flushed the AB with Mr. Tool Cleaner and the result was much smoother afterwards. A valid lesson learned: it's worth thoroughly cleaning your airbrush even between two paint layers. I'll give it a complete clean when I'm painting the JT to make sure I did everything I could to make the result as good as possible. 

The small dots were painted with a small round brush using the green Tamiya mixture and MMP dark yellow + some white: no rocket science here.

And what about those mixtures I made? Well, gotta say I'm very happy with the green and brown. Green is a mixture of my previously made "Faded olive green" which I made for the Tiger F13, but I added a few drops of NATO Green and a drop of Dark Yellow. Then of course a lot of clear varnish (I'd say about 40%) and also a ton of thinner. I made them so thin so I could spray them smoothly at 10psi (btw the recommended MMP pressure is 15-20psi which is a lot! good luck spraying precise lines with that pressure). 

The brown is XF-64 Red Brown, but it wasn't red brown enough so I added a few drops of red and then I lightened it up with Dark Yellow and also pure yellow. I added a lot of both, but can't remember how much. It comes to personal taste how light you want it to be tbh. I like them so much I stored them in VMS bottles so I can use them on any future models as well, they're airbrush-ready with gloss added and everything 😁Also I made the brown even lighter after I was done testing, so once I apply it on the JT it'll be slightly brighter than this. 

Now we're all set to start painting the Jagdtiger over the weekend! I don't know how much I'll get done tomorrow, it's supposedly gonna be the last warm day of the year here, so I'll definitely spend some time outside, but hey, hopefully I'll get at least the primer on!