Planning the next multiple build of 3 Mirages 5 of the Belgian air force I was intrigued by a Belgian air force paint set from AK interactive. This real colour set contains 4 colours to paint the Belgian SEA camo used on our aircraft till the nineties.
SEA (South East Asia) Camo is well known from the USAF Vietnam aircraft.
The paint reference are: FS30219 (tan), FS34102 (light green), FS34079 (dark green) and FS36622 (light grey)

The AK Belgian set stated that the dark green for the Belgian aircraft is specific and is FS34034 rather than FS34079. This made me curious and I wanted to see for myself. Therefore I bought the set and since it is the first time I will use the real colours (Air) AK set I will compare 3 full sets of SEA camo paint brands: MRP , Gunze and the new AK real colours.
All three brand will be sprayed on a scrap fuselage piece with my Evolution airbrush.

MRP 101, 102, 103 & 104 are acrylic lacquers and do not need to diluted. they spray very well out of the bottle. MR. Paint brand is my current favourite paint.

Gunze are regular acrylics and I usually thin these with isopropyl alcohol on a 50/50 ratio, sometimes more depending on what I want to achieve with my airbrush. Before using MRP, I mostly used Gunze and/or tamiya acrylics.

There is quite a lot of customer complaints about the AK Real Colour Air range. These are acrylic lacquers but getting information about what thinner to use yields conflicting results. Maybe it comes from the fact that the other Real colour range (non AIR) is of a different formula. Of course the best bet is to always use the brand thinner but honestly paint are expensive enough and I am not ready to invest a lot of money in many different branded thinner when most of the time it is quite possible to find a one fits all less expensive product.
The Air range does not react well to water. Adding water immediately turns the paint into a thin paste. Forget trying to airbrush that, it will clog the airbrush in no time. I was a bit afraid of getting the same reaction with my usual isopropyl alcohol and in the end I used Mr Colour levelling thinner, which worked fine (and what I usually use for lacquers anyway).

The test is meant to judge the colour tint of the same FS from different ranges and see how the paint sprays. There is no real accuracy in the patterns and although it will be a freehand camo with blurred edges, no real care is taken to actually make the borders perfect.

First test was made on a rear scrap Mirage 5 fuselage with the AK paints. These were ‘heavily’ thinned with Mr Colour levelling thinner. Yet the paint is still too thick. This is noticeable with the tan colour being projected too much on the greens.
The second test was made with the Gunze paint thinned with isopropyl alcohol 50/50.
Last test was made using Mr. Paint references straight out of the bottle.
FS36622: Left MRP, middle AK and right Gunze.

So what does all this tell us except we’re on dangerous colour comparison grounds?

Top left: MRP – Top right: Gunze – Bottom: AK

Comparing colours is difficult because no 2 aircraft are the same, colours fade and light conditions greatly impacts the comparison. We need here to take a factory fresh painted mirage as a reference to dismiss the colour fading. Luckily the MIRSIP program provided great colour pictures of freshly painted mirages in the nineties.

Credits: SBAP collection

The trigger colour for this test was the dark green. On Belgian air force aircraft the SEA dark green is indeed more grey than on usual USAF SEA painted aircraft. The AK RC342 renders this quite good but the difference from the other two is not striking either; regardless of the different FS number.
The light green (FS34102) on the other hand is referenced as the same FS number but the results are quite different from one brand to another. AK RC083 is much more vibrant (maybe a bit too much) whereas the two others are quite dull in comparison. That difference is much more noticeable than the dark green different hues. We started by investigating a non issue and we found another one !

I think the AK real colour set grants a full model test. Their promise of being the most accurate has raised my interest and this result makes me want to build a mirage using the AK range and judge with the final model before giving my final thought.
But first I’ll need to find a way to spray these paints in thin lines by finding the best thinner and the best ratio.