I have an Aztec 470 kit, the one in the wooden box. I have had a great deal of trouble getting it to work right. I know it is not the kit, but me and impatience. Some lessons I have learned in the last year:

1. Everyone says, "mix to the consistence of milk", but it never works for me. Solution: buy air-brushable paint in the bottle. Examples are Testors Visions, Badger Model Flex and teh Poly Scale Railroad colors. As I model mostly modern armor now various shades of green, brown and black work just fine. I want a faded affects anyway. I know it can be done, but I just buy it already the right consistency.

2. Take my time... it has become a mantra for me when air brushing. I relax and take a deep breath, clean up the bench, mix the paints to color and then paint.

3. You can always paint over screwups. I have painted one tank 3 times.

4. You are your own worst critic. My modelling buddy came over and looked at my last effort and was very complimentary. "YOU did that? I thought you said you couldn't airbrush!

5. Practice, practice and practice.

Any comments are more than welcome... I will send Jim a picture of my latest work when I get the small details painted.

I'm going to print that out and stick it over my work bench...

The 'brush ready paint seems a good idea, but it means running another range of colours -
Silly question, can you brush paint with them..?

Half my trouble seems to be not mixing the paint properly so it may be worth my while to get some different paint.
BTW thanks for your response on my other airbrush thread, I shall try that.

I have used the paint to touch up afte air brushing and it seems to go on OK. I would not do that over unpainted plastic/resin but over paint or primer most of it seems to work.

It is water-based, too, which makes cleanup much easier. I just run alcohol through the brush after using it and it is clean. ( Do not do this around open flames or you will have a flame thrower! The neat part about the Testor Visions (which I have been told have been discontinued , is the size of the bottle and the ability to mix the paints freely. I have a a jar of mixed "baby puke green" I use for faded cammo green. The Sienna works great for a brown... no black.

I discovered a technique last night I thought I would pass on. I painted the black first and it splatter badly. It was the Badger paint. I think I had the pressure too high (I think this is the problem). I grabbed a large, soft brush and soaked up most of the excess black paint. Then I got out the Sienna and green and after the black was dry painted those, covering the splats, etc. it worked fine. I was using the orgnae tip for the sienna, which provided the base, then the black fine tip for the green. I may do this from now on with these moden paint schemes. Black/brown/green.

Any comments?