I got the universal for $80 (final price) on ebay, (it was cheaper than @ dixieart by a little) though I din't get the kit version. I probably could have gotten a better deal when it all counted for, but oh well.

I have a big 5 gal compressor that I'm going to use...should be enough.

anyway...hope to recieve my airbrush soon.

heh, I had gotten the item number wrong with the price on my email order to them and they caught it. I switched to the 360 and reorded it. I looked at it and think the grav feed option would make life easy both cleaning and doing tiny projects and weathering. The more I look at it, the better that pen seems to be a one-pen-does-all for modeling. I just ordered about 12 cheapie 1/72 aircraft kits on ebay to practice on before buying mongo 1/32 kits. That cup is probably enough to do individual camo colors on those little guys.

I got the set but it comes with only a 6' hose. I think I will end up upgrating to a longer one with second moisture trap and quick disconnect in the near future, so the $80 you paid is still a steal. The extra bottles and little plastic box don't add up to much.

that's good to know. This is my first airbrush so getting models to practice on is a good idea, I have some figures that I'm gonna paint though, so maybe I can practice airbrushing the primer on while I wait to get some more "model" money...

I hope that my compressor will be fine, i suppose the only issue there should be is that it'll be loud.

you can get lots of aircraft pretty cheap on ebay. I ended up getting 14 1/72 hasegawa kits for about $65 bucks this week. You can get other kits even cheaper, I've seen the 4 pack AMT thunderbirds kits go for $6-10(4 decent F-4 kits, you can do other decal sets). Armor models might be a good way to start airbrushing too, a lot of one-color vehicles with a bunch of weathering options, if you get smaller scale ones, they build much faster and you can get to the painting quickly. Just look under model kits on ebay and there is always a deal to be had on practice material only a few hours from ending

I got that compressor today. Looks like its pretty stout and well built. Its pretty quiet too. For under 115 bucks with reasonable shipping its a steal. I still have to hook up a pen to it, but with the tank, I can't see it not working perfectly. It did rattle a bit from the handle but a couple scraps of rubber bands made it shut up. Not as quiet as a $500+ super compressor, but nowhere near loud enough to make you change your voice in conversation or bug the neighbors.

oh, yeah. My compressor will be loud when it needs to repressurize the tank, loud enough to need to raise your voice, or yell. Call it what you want. :-) But it's free, b/c i don't have to buy another compressor. There are certainly tradeoffs.