Annual Memorial Day post: Free Therapy

Another Memorial Day. I didn't really have a subject planned for this one. So maybe I'll just blather a bit, honoring the fallen by enjoying the freedom of speech our veterans gave us. And give myself some cheap therapy at the same time. I'll find a way to tie it all together in the end.

You are Redundant

The last year was an interesting up and down stretch in my life. The most significant event was that I got laid off just before the start of Q4 2025. It was honestly a tough shot to take. I've never been fired for performance-related issues before, and I'm not sure I was for this one, but I do think it was related to me not being the best me that I could be. 

I've always been a hard worker. One of my mottos is that "I'm not the smartest, but I'm not the dumbest either, and I'll out work most." But in my last job there was a perfect storm of issues that made it easy for my employer to include me in a cost cutting wave. 

First, I was transitioning from a contractor role to full-time. As a contractor you pretty much get a set group of tasks and just do your technical work to participate in a project or support team, then go home. That's it. No annual bullshit HR goal-setting meetings, no trepidation about another rung on the imaginary ladder of self-esteem, no haranguing over bonuses, no expectations of any promotion. Your promotion, bonus, and compensation area all wrapped up into your hourly rate, which is typically higher than the base salary of a full-time worker. So when I went full-time for the first time in over a decade, I had to contend with that shit and it didn't take me long to realize why I enjoyed contracting so much. As a contractor you get to focus on the one thing that matters to clients: work.

Then, and this is probably the most important change, the environment I was jumping into was very different than the previous ones I'd worked in. The way the networks were organized was different, there was a big push to go to the cloud, and security was heavy. I could not install software on my PC without an act of congress. It was also true in the application space; the version of the software we supported was highly customized. There were entire modules of the commercial application the company forewent entirely, instead channeling data to their own internal systems. Some of the internal systems were brilliant and powerful, others were noticeably clunky and behind the times, but nearly all were poorly documented and not intuitively designed. Often the development environment felt like a Frankenstein system, cobbled together from may disparate parts. So with regards to both the core app I supported, all the related custom systems, and the unfamiliar parts of the environment, I really struggled to get comfortable there.

Additionally, the company was highly globalized. My supervisor was located in a time zone where my time zone only overlapped with his for half a day, and he was often very busy and hard to get time with. And in my local office, there was no one on my team that had deep experience with my team's domain. I often felt that I was dumped into a task where there was little context or business analysis provided, and it became clear that either I still lacked deep understanding in some sectors of the space, and/or the proper tutelage in it. 

Another factor: this was not the biggest issue, but it bears mentioning that despite a "no assholes" hiring policy at the company, some deviants slipped through the screening. Even with that, I admired that everybody (including the deviants) at the company was really smart and hard working, and I still do.

So, perfect storm. I was gradually learning and making progress, but it was hard going and after two years I felt stressed and uncomfortable there. That was probably a sign I needed a change in environment, but my default stance is to not be a quitter. I soldiered on, sometimes spinning my wheels when I got stuck and didn't know how to get help. When the company executed a large layoff, I'm sure they compared me to peers at the same level and felt I was a candidate for dismissal. They buried the action in corporate speak, but the whole thing felt to me like the old Enron "rank and yank." The timing was such that I got wrapped up in it, largely due to what appeared to be spotty productivity and a few honest mistakes I'd made.

I accept full responsibility for my part in the layoff. As I concede above, I was not comfortable and not delivering the best version of me that I could. I made a couple of mistakes, mostly with minor effects and all repairable; sometimes due to a carelessness on my part, but also aided by some of the clunky tools I noted that made some tasks more difficult. It is fair to also say that the company too needs to accept some of that responsibility. 

The company likes technology, which is good, but in the rush to get there, it has left in its wake a mish mash of technologies that don't always connect smoothly. And nothing is given a good guidance to entry. It's my understanding that someone preceding me had voluntarily left, and now I begin to understand why. It's a difficult environment to manage and master. There's a person on the team that's doing well, but that individual started at the bottom and the expectations on the person are different. My predecessor and I came in as experienced resources, but there's no easy way to be experienced in this company's environment unless you were there from the beginning.

In the end, I still respect the company. It generally treats people well, though it's also quick to cut them. But the company was quite fair in separation. I can't give details as I'm under NDA, but overall I do think highly of the company and wish things could have gone differently. 

Moving On

The fourth quarter is a tough time to be unemployed. I spent most of it also enduring a hit to my confidence. I'd been laid off before, but only as a contractor, where contracts ended prematurely due to funding issues or project cancelations, not because I wasn't at my best. The ensuing job search was one of the strangest I'd ever been through. The longest I was unemployed before was about five months. It was shortly after Ken Lay and his band of arrogant Enron knuckleheads had fallen and from the end of 2001 to April 2002, there simply wasn't much available in the energy industry and I really struggled. Thank goodness I'd saved and had an emergency fund to live on; I even kept making extra principle payments on my mortgage and didn't take a penny of unemployment (stupid, I realize now, as we employed pay into the unemployment fund so there should be no shame when we claim it). 

This time around was just weird. Like 2002, the economy is subject to some strangeness, though this time was due to global events, not so much Houston specifically. So there were opportunities, and during this stretch I managed to get interviews every couple weeks. What was odd about it was that those interviews yielded so many close calls. The interviews went well and I thought for sure something would bear fruit, but something always pulled the opportunity away at the last moment. In some cases, it was that the company I interviewed with liked me but my hiring was contingent on them winning a project and the client ended up going somewhere else. In two others it was because the companies wanted someone with Azure Dev Ops, and unfortunately I hadn't much exposure to it when I was contracting or at my last company (another case where using their proprietary in-house systems hurt me).

In between all these false alarms was a small blessing. I was free to explore model building. And I did. And I learned why so many have claimed modeling works as therapy, helping people keep their hands busy in a creative task. I could burn days in a row focused on building and painting, and not worrying about when the next call for a job would come. Because why worry if it's coming anyway but you just don't know when? Fill that time with something beautiful.

I would find new work in Q1 2026, and what a revelation my new employer has been. For one, the new company has done a great job of implementing the "no assholes" hiring policy.  For another, they take a totally different approach to employee support. If you ever run into any problems, there are multiple people that can help and they encourage people to help, to post on the company wikis, and to offer assistance enthusiastically with no shame. It's all about getting things done and furthering everyone's knowledge. They also use Azure Dev Ops, and my current supervisor takes into account my interest in it and is offering opportunities to do work in it. Already I built my first pipeline to roll a build to an environment and I'm learning about how to work with it and how powerful ADO can be. This won't be a resume roadblock if I have to go interviewing again.

But it is full-time. So at some point I will have to deal with those full-time positional expectations. I will have to evaluate is this company is worth sticking it out with to the end (it is) or if I want to shoot for one more stint in contracting. I've only got about four more years of work left if things go swimmingly well, five to seven if they go moderately well, or until I die if it all goes apeshit. Not helping matters is the onset of AI, a president that's trying to make America hated, and America's progression to a low-trust society. Interesting times ahead indeed.

But for now, here are the Memorial Day lessons I take from the last year. Competition still exists and makes for an environment where I was able to find new work. Freedom means I could do what I wanted with my free time, and say what I wanted, within reason. And we still have our veterans; if it gets bad, it won't be without a fight.

Recruiters in the Age of AI

In my career I've come full circle on recruiters.

When I started, the only recruiters I knew of were the ones that went to college career fairs. I appreciated them as my first contact to a potential opportunity. 

Later, when I started contracting, I would take a more adversarial perception of them as they often were my contact points at consulting firms (a stretch, as some of those companies should have been called body shops rather than consulting firms). These agents seemed less on my side than the recruiters I'd known before. They were in a way related to account management and were being paid by how much they could lowball your compensation. If you were being billed out for $80/hr, they wanted to you make $40/hr or even less, because they'd keep the difference. I met some real bastards here. I discussed this years ago on this blog when I was commenting on the H1B visa workers who were similarly getting raw deals by firms like Accenture and that ilk. 

My derision for "recruiters" lasted for a long time while I contracted. But when I recently looked for work in the age of social media and AI, recruiters proved they were more valuable than ever before.

Tell me if you've seen this one before: you find a job listing on LinkedIn or Dice or Indeed that fits you well. Your heart starts to beat faster. You get excited and start thinking about how you could help this employer. Then you look at the little note beside the listing that says, "1000 people have already applied for this job."

Sucks, doesn't it? You're not getting that job. If you apply now, your chances are extremely low that a human being will even look at your application. Want it to suck more? Get this, a fair percentage of the 1000 that already applied aren't qualified and some of them might not even be human. 

Yep, social media and AI have made job hunting an exercise in futility. 

Here's where recruiters are valuable. Assuming you've made contact with one that's a human, that recruiter will email you directly. That recruiter will talk to you directly on the phone. That recruiter also has a relationship with a real human at a potential employer with whom the recruiter also emails and phones directly. And that connection is the most powerful shield against a harsh and cruel world of social media and AI. There could be 1000 resumes on the hiring manager's desk send from a job site, but that hiring manager talks to your recruiter personally and that's why you have a chance; it's because of that recruiter.

This is not to say that all recruiters are great. They're like anyone else, some are better than others. But as the old ways of communication haven't died off, there is still something AI can't replicate, and that's human interaction. It's trying, and some weirdos that watched too many bad SF movies with Robin Williams in them have tried to help by marrying AI personalities, but we all know that's bullshit. When it comes to getting in touch with a real person, you do it through a real person. All the AI submitted resumes in the world can't compete with a recruiter that has a real line on a real job with a real hiring manager.

So to all the recruiters that I ever thought negative things about, I apologize. Unless you were truly one of bad ones. 

More Models

Since the last post I've been attacking some models and actually finished a couple. It helped that I got laid off in late September so I've had some time. Lots of updates.

Airbrushing

I finally started practicing with the airbrush. I used the cheap ones that came with my compressor to paint the olive drab on the upper surface of an early B-25 Mitchell bomber. I also used it to spray intermediate blue and sea blue on a pair of planes where I was practicing the USN WWII tri-color camouflage scheme. 

I used Squadron acrylic paints and they worked great with the airbrush, both the cheap ones and the Iwata Eclipse I plucked from the Hobby Lobby blowout.

Ok, so I owe Jose Luiz Lopez a half apology for my earlier post where I took issue with his statement that $150 compressor/airbrush bundles were total trash. I'd said that's not true for compressors, and I'll stand by that because the little compressor I got works fantastically. I said the brushes were acceptable and you don't have to spend big bucks to get one. Here's where I own half an apology; the cheap brushes that came with mine are just OK for spraying large areas but they aren't reliable for trying to spray in finer areas and with lower pressure. Tip dry seemed to happen more often with them. However, I've been hearing good things about Gaahleri and other more affordable brushes (starting at $30 on sale), so it's only half an apology because you can still get a good quality brush without spending the hundreds that Lopez indicated you'd have to spend. Even then, I can still use my cheap ones for priming, base coats, and varnishing.

The Iwata is really nice and I'm lucky to have gotten one on sale.

Three Cars

During my "sabbatical" I built three cars in addition to the 280Z I built earlier.

1970 Dodge Challenger (1/25 scale, AMT)

This AMT kit comes from a series of US Postal Service themed sets boxed in collectible tins. I got it because I liked the box but also because I hope to use the car in a diorama for a friend. He owns a 2018 Dodge Challenger Hellcat and an auto parts company. I have an idea to pair this 1970 Challenger with a model of his Hellcat and tie it into a diorama themed for his company.

I started this kit probably somewhere around late summer of 2025, then finished it off during my time off work, wrapping it up mostly in November. It's better than I remembered most AMT kits from when I was a kid, helped probably by being a 1981 tooling rather than a 1960's tooling. It wasn't perfect; there are fit issues putting on the rear bumper and the roof, but a nice build overall. It was my second serious effort at a civilian vehicle after the 76 280Z and I think it turned out ok. 

Lots of lessons learned:

• Be careful with those Testors spray enamels, especially if they're old. I used a dark red can from that first bundle I bought, and the pressure wasn't up to snuff and the paint came out too heavy and it looked awful. So awful that I stripped the body with mineral spirits and redid it with a different paint.
• Hobby paints are overpriced. I redid the body with a generic gloss burgundy spray from Ace Hardware. It was $6 for a big can, versus $9 and more for one of those dinky hobby cans. I'm not saying the hobby paints can't be awesome; the little Tamiya lacquer cans spray fantastic! But the Ace stuff went on just fine, and I've been using consumer-grade primers on other kits. But ultimately, I will have to move to airbrushing for more control. It's too easy to over flood areas with rattle cans. 
• Priming is critical for cars. Car bodies often need a gloss paint. I noticed these can pool up into small groups on untreated smooth plastic. I primed the car body parts with Mr. Surfacer 1000 and it worked great. 
• Gloss varnish really helps with decals. Really good decals may not need it as much, but some gloss varnish under the decal helps to reduce silvering. 
• Panel wash is great on wheels. I got panel wash mainly for emphasizing panel lines on airplanes, but a little black wash over chrome wheels will help bring out the details and add shadow where untreated chrome plating would otherwise be too shiny or smooth to show them. It's one of the easiest weathering/detailing tools you can use.
• I wonder if AMT are ripping us off for as much as they charge for forty-year-old molds (and sometimes older!).
• I haven't painted the metal frame around the front and rear windshields yet. When I painted the frame on the 280Z, it was really difficult. Since then, during a live chat on Modeling with Mike (YouTube), I learned from some other modelers that using Bare Metal Foil is a much better way to do it. Or chrome pen, but that still requires tricky masking of curved surfaces.
• I don't know if more recent toolings feature better design, but while cars can go together quickly there are several problematic areas. Getting the body fully assembled and attached to the chassis usually involves some tricky maneuvering to get the body in place, navigating the interior and the engine. Sometimes getting the interior or windows on can be touchy as well. And for bodies that include extra parts, you have to find ways to make the paint homogeneous (on cars, getting that body paint perfect is like 80% of the point of car kits). I'm curious about how newer Tamiya cars go together, there has to be a better design for these things.
• I haven't yet tried to detail-up the engines. I've seen some incredible work by modelers online where they've added cables, weathering, and scratch-built parts. That's something I'll have to work on; the Challenger was mostly just out-of-box.
• Car kits are interesting in that many support several build options. So when you're done, there are often many parts left over, including possibly multiple tire and wheel sets, engine parts, and alternate hoods. I've noticed some people save them in a scrap parts pile for later kit bashing or sell them online. 
• Patience is the number one tool in a modeler's toolbox. Sometimes you have to simply take a day long break from a car kit after laying down a coat of paint so it has time to fully dry.

1965 Chevy Stepside (1/25 scale, Revell)

This is a common kit you can still find at retail, a 2022 rebox of a 1999 mold. I really liked the way this kit came together. It offered options to build it stock or custom; I chose to do the custom edition since it had nicer looking wheels. The box featured a body in metallic green; I did it in gloss green since I didn't have a metallic green and I did have a new can of Testors gloss green enamel spray (yes, I know above I said to avoid these, but this new can kept pretty well and the paint atomized enough to work).

Design was quite different from the other cars I built. Where the others had an interior that came molded in a square bay, this one's interior was a square platform and you added in the sides. The sides had better detail than the sides on the other kits. I found it a bit funky at first, but it did go together very well and its details were easier to paint.

The engine was actually quite fun to build. I sprayed the red color instead of using a marker as I did for the 70 Challenger, so it looks much better. I was able to use the last bit of the dark red Testors enamel that didn't work for the Challenger body but did ok here. I was worried the red was too dark, but over the white primer I used it looks ok. I deviated from the instructions in one way; the custom engine was supposed to use chrome head covers; I elected to use the stock ones because they had the word "Chevrolet" embossed on them, and I brought that lettering out by gently painting on with silver from
an acrylic marker. It looks nice and you can actually read the letters. It's a great touch even though it might not be accurate.

I used two different varnishes on the cab, the hood, and the bed. The bed and hood got shot with Testors Extreme Lacquer Wet Look Clear, which was great. I had a can of Humbrol gloss acrylic varnish that I wanted to test and it was horrible. It went on and dulled the natural gloss on the green enamel paint. So I let it dry then added a light coat of the Testors Wet Look Clear and that helped a bit. But very disappointed in the Humbrol, which I know now should be treated as a matt. What a disappointment from a major name in modeling paints.

The only real issue the kit gave me was the usual wiggly dance you have to do to get the body (cab in this case) onto the chassis. Getting the interior tub, engine, and cab all aligned was pretty tough, but I got it and overall the truck looks pretty close to the picture on the box cover. 

There was one area where I actually improved it over the cover build. The front of the cab body has a part you have to add in. The fit here is quite loose and there is a noticeable gap around the part even after gluing it in. The instructions don't really identify this part until later in the build when you are finishing up the cab so initially I'd painted the cab shell by itself. Even the cover model shows the gap. But I didn't like that look, so I affixed the front piece to the cab, then filled and sanded it, then hit the front of the whole assembly with the paint. It worked great and my build has a smooth front that I think is even better than the box picture. 

The last step was the decals and wow, what great decals Revell put in here. The custom scheme calls for white flame decals around the hood and wheel wells. They all went on beautifully. I'm not sure if it's because the paint was glossy, or because the decals were of high quality, or both. Probably both; the decals behaved really well, no silvering. Not once did they fold up or tear on me, even the long curved parts of the flames. Just a fantastic experience; well done, Revell.

I have to decide if I want to prop open the hood to show off the engine or just glue it closed and join the Society of the Hidden Paint (on Reddit). It might be easier to just shut it. I'll be gifting this one to a local auto shop that did some body work for me. 

M998 HMMWV (1/35, Italeri)

This kit came from the armor lot I picked up summer 2025 from an army vet that didn't have time for modeling anymore. It was an expensive bundle but there were some great kits in it. Since I'm not an armor guy I sold off several of them and made a small profit, but I kept the HMMWV and I built it in desert sand color. 

It's an OK kit. There are fit issues, especially in adding the roof section to the main body, but overall it was fun to build. The kit was missing the clear sprue, but I found a replacement on eBay and was able to get the front windshield and headlight glass that way. I'm only missing the back windows on the rear enclosure.

This was technically my second car after the 280Z but the first military armor I've build in my return to modeling. I accidentally started weathering it when I sprayed the sand color on the wheels and excess went on the tires. That overspray formed the foundation for sand-colored dirt on the tires that I enhanced with a bit more paint. I need to add some weathering to the rest of the body.

This kit will be gifted to my neighbor, an ex-marine who said he liked the HMMWV.

Navy Planes

Got work done on a couple planes I'd started earlier as well. 

PV-1 Ventura (1/72, Academy)

This is a kit I got in a stash a mom was selling that she'd collected for her kids when they were younger. They dabbled in a few of the kits but on the cusp of heading to college now, she needed to get rid of a couple boxes of models that were just collecting dust. I sold off a few of the collectible items, but the bulk of the bundle was 1/72 aircraft, which is my main jam, so I will keep and build most of the kits. The Ventura is the first kit I started.

This kit hails from 1987, a decent molding that's middle-aged rather than vintage, and I found it to be a good kit overall. Form seems mostly accurate, and fit is decent. There were a few tricky parts in building up the fuselage and I was fortunate to have found an Eduard mask set for its several windows and especially for the birdcage canopy. 

As only my second kit in my return to modeling and my second one using an airbrush, I learned quite a bit while applying the navy tri-color camouflage (bottom: white, middle: intermediate blue, top: sea blue).

• Because I was worried about how to mask the turret guns while painting, I ended up masking off the dorsal and ventral turret areas and not installing them until after painting the body. This worked ok and I didn't have issues completing the construction afterward, but the bottom turret's canopy frames didn't get sprayed with the rest of the bottom so the paint isn't homogeneous, and I didn't realize until late that there was a gap that needed filling and sanding here. I have to figure out how to assemble the guns and mask them so the whole thing can be painted together.
• The airbrush affords much better control than the spray can, so I didn't mask everything, thinking I could freehand it. I had only masked the bottom white part of the fuselage when painting the intermediate blue layer, then removing it and free handing the sea blue layer. It actually worked OK, but I was premature in removing the white mask, which would have protected that area from any overspray from the blues (and from my damn fingers tracking paint). I should have also masked the intermediate blue layer after it dried because some of the sea blue lightly covered it and darkened it. It was not so bad that I felt I had to strip it or repaint the intermediate blue area, but I won't be entering this one into any competitions.
• The Iwata Eclipse was used to paint this and I really like the way it sprays with the Squadron paints.

After applying decals, this one is not bad and is pretty close to the box picture. I did not varnish it, but I might and then also try adding some weathering. Both this kit and the Dauntless below are intended as cheap paint mules, but I think I did ok in making them presentable.

SBD Dauntless (1/72, Testors)

This is a super cheap kit with all of about ten parts. It is intended for beginners and the In Scale and Detail review absolutely lambastes it for being terrible. But it cost me all of about $4 and was a great choice to use as a paint mule and a platform for practicing weathering.

As you might expect, it built up really fast. I didn't prime it; just went straight with white spray paint on the bottom, Squadron intermediate blue for the middle, and Squadron sea blue for the top. The tri-color scheme is actually incorrect; based on the decals this is supposed to be an early Dauntless, so it should be blue gray over gull gray. But I really wanted to practice the tri-color scheme. As I had with the Ventura before it, I did not really mask well, but this time around I was more gentle with the sea blue application and the final result is decent. I'm particularly pleased with the way the birdcage cockpit masking came out as it was fully scratch made by me since there were no third-party masks for this kit.

I still have to paint and affix the bombs and then I will practice some weathering. I already added some silver paint with the markers to simulate chipping around the cowl. This is a very easy technique that requires little setup, though the effect isn't quite as good when the paint is applied with a jagged sponge piece. I think practice adding some engine exhaust and some fluid leakage. I may also test some post-painting techniques for adding tonality to the wings.

So far, it was as great choice to cheaply practice. I also did a bit with weathering, which is something I'm new to. I experimented with different colors for panel lines. On the left wing and fuselage, I used a blue gray wash. It didn't really show up very well and the panel lines are very subtle. That's not wrong, but generally pro modelers I see like to make lines with greater contrast although I personally find that simultaneously unrealistic and more aesthetically pleasing.

Then on the right side I used a darker gray panel wash and this, especially on the intermediate blue, provided greater contrast.

The final bit of practice was to also use panel washes on the bottom. The results were the same as before. The blue gray wash didn't really register much, the dark gray was much better. A lot of modelers use black, which I know will create a better contrast, but I wanted to experiment with something different.

PBY Catalina (1/72, Academy)

I started this one but it's a big boy, even at 1/72. I have finished most of the construction and painted the white and intermediate blue layers of the camouflage. I still need to finish the sea blue on top and finish building out the engines and props.

So far one improvement in my technique is that for the Dauntless and Ventura, I went ahead and assembled the props during the construction phase since they way they were designed, you had to have them on to put on the cowlings. And you typically would want the cowlings on before painting. But that meant I had to create these goofy masks around the props to keep them from getting painted (and I didn't want to mess up the black props with yellow tips I'd already done). It worked but did leave the front edge of the cowlings not painted well.

This time I was a bit more creative and used blue tac poster putty to hold the cowlings on the Catalina's engine nacelles. I'll paint the plane, then afterward pull off the cowlings and affix the engines and props.

Pictures to come in a future post.

Review: Master Airbrush Instant Aerosol Trigger Handle

When I model, especially as I get into it from a fresh start, I've found that spray cans can be a useful supplement to brush and airbrush painting.

But as I'm older I also don't want to do things that are hard on my hands. Holding down the dispenser nozzle on the spray paint can can get tiring if you do it in a long painting session. I also can't tell you the number of times I've pressed the nozzle only to find that I didn't aim it quite right and paint sprayed off target until I adjusted. 

I picked up the Master Airbrush Instant Aerosol Trigger Handle to help with these issues. This device is sold on Amazon as a pair for about $15. I have also seen similar items sold in singles at local hardware stores.

The device is a handle that you affix to the top of the spray can and it has a trigger mechanism that you can depress with your finger or hand while using a more natural grip. As long as you install it correctly on the spray can, it also allows you to aim the spray. Spray cans are pretty universal in design and this means the handles can be installed on nearly all cans. I like that the clamping mechanism on these that has plier-like pincher handles. I have seen some variations of this tool that have to be snapped on or slipped on, and their less flexible fastening points might be more prone to breakage.

It seems a small thing, but I liked these simple utility items. They did make using the spray cans a little easier and more comfortable to use. They seem fairly durable to me, though not invincible; you will need to take care to be gentle with them as they involve using bendable plastic to secure themselves to the cans. But they should last for many uses and will be useful especially for those with limited agility or grip.

Notes on Model Painting

All right. I'm nine months into my return to modeling.  

Paints

Paints indeed cost a fair amount as you need many colors and there are many types of paints and accessory items for each. For each brand of paint, modelers recommend getting the manufacturer's brand of thinners, cleaners, and retarders, the argument being that generally speaking the manufacturer would best produce items of chemical compatibility. That makes sense, and most of the time, once you buy a bottle of thinner or retarder, you won't need to buy it again for a long time. So paints and paint auxiliaries add up, but once you're set, you're good for several models. 

I started with the enamels that I got in the big bundle purchase mentioned in an earlier post. After ten years, these Testors paints are still working well. 

But I've been introduced to the acrylics, something I'd never used before. It was quite a relief and very comfortable to work without having to wear a respirator mask and both affordable and easy to thin and clean with just water or isopropyl alcohol. The newer acrylic formulations from AMMO (the ATOM line) and Squadron (Scale Colors) represent an evolution in the paints, where they behave more like enamels and lacquers without being toxic. 

Going forward, I will probably favor acrylics for most work, but my enamels are still useful and cater to my OCD commitment to the sunk cost fallacy (to any overly literal pinheads reading this, that was a joke). The exception might be auto model bodies, where lacquers can provide excellent glossy results.

Airbrush and Compressor

This can be expensive, but should be a one-time purchase that will last you your modeling life. You can go a little cheaper here with off-brands. My experience is that those ubiquitous cheap Chinese air compressors and portable paint booths are actually fine. The general advice is to get a compressor with a tank, but I've also seen many testimonials that for light use, the tankless compressors are sufficient and very affordable and compact.

The airbrushes themselves are all over the map; you can get cheap ones for under $50, and there seems to be no upper limit if you want to get brand name fancy. But the cheap ones now are good enough, and nearly any brush can do well if you are good with masking. There are two kinds of painters out there; the natural talents that can free-hand everything and have great results, and the ones like me that can deliver good results only after using a few pounds of masking tape. The point here is that for all the screaming you'll hear from the modeling purists, a mediocre airbrush can work fine if you know how to prepare.

I love the modeling books from AMMO, and the author of the excellent How to Paint with the Airbrush, Jose Luiz Lopez, teaches you everything you need to know about airbrush use and maintenance. However, I take exception to his assertion that an airbrush setup must be expensive. In chapter 4, on page 37, he states:

"The cheap sets that include a compressor, three airbrushes, hose, airbrush holder, various colours and a painting manual, for $150 USD/130 £ are, bluntly and simply put, money down the drain."

More amenable is the advice of the people at SprayGunner.com who sell brand names like Badger, Iwata, Harder & Steenbeck, and Grex. They note the brand name ones are made of the best quality components, but are also forthcoming that their affordable No-Name brand airbrushes are more than capable. The difference in cost is substantive; a basic airbrush with hose and multiple removeable cups and needle sizes is USD$25 vs. at least USD$100 or more for a premier branded product. 

Here's my main argument to Luiz Lopez: air compressors and tanks are not new technologies. They've been around for decades, if not centuries, and are commodities. Economically, a commodity is something that is an established, common, and mass-produced item. A commodity benefits from economies of scale and is affordable and reliable. So I don't have a problem with the teeming hordes of hobby compressors being sold everywhere. They're bland but affordable and do their jobs, and that's all a modeler needs. 

Where I come back a little to Luiz Lopez's position is on the airbrush. While I do think they can be commodities too, I accept that the higher quality brands probably do use better metals and rubber for their components, feature more precise engineering, and will be better than the generic airbrushes. But I don't bust on the cheap ones as much; they're probably of sufficient quality for most modelers. I also think the generics have gotten better over time and the cheap airbrush of 1995 is not the same as the one in 2025. The No-Name airbrushes at SprayGunner.com have universally good reviews.

13-Nov-2025 Update: I tried out my Iwata Eclipse for the first time yesterday (Hobby Lobby blew them out at 50% off when they stopped carrying them [idiots!] and I managed to get one). Welp, I may need to relent a bit on my previous thought that the use of the pack-in brushes. The Eclipse definitely yielded a smoother and more consistent spray and had better control, especially at lower paint volumes (when you are not pulling the trigger all the way back and using full paint flow). The cheap ones I have are still ok for large areas, and the Eclipse isn't immune to the laws of physics and can still get "tip dry" but clearly some brushes are better than others. But I've learned that some lower cost brands are actually quite good; both Mike Myers of the "Modeling with Mike" YouTube channel and the Squadron guys are endorsing Gaahleri brushes. I will have to try one out someday.

Paint Brush (hand brush)

I still like hand brushing and find it relaxing. It's also more appropriate for small parts. These brushes are readily available in many stores. 

For hand brushes, I find that spending a bit more does help. One of the cheap brushes I got didn't survive more than one use with a brush applied Tamiya lacquer primer. It fell apart during cleaning. The synthetic brushes I got from AMMO are very good, however, I haven't tried them with stronger paints yet. 

I also tried out a silicone brush which is less like a brush than a wedge, but it has proven handy for certain types of detail work.

End Thoughts

My early model building involved no painting at all. I would slap together a kit and its only decoration would be sloppily applied decals and fingerprints of glue. You do not have to paint a model to enjoy the hobby. 

In time though, I would come to appreciate that while building a model gives it life, painting a model gives it a soul. It's a cost you have to pay to make the best of model building.

Modeling Hack: use War Thunder

In my return to model building, I've been having a good time, but I've also hit some frustrating road blocks, including:

• Items out of stock: I swear, why is everyone buying out the same paint color I need? It's been a bear trying to get interior green for various airplane cockpits. There must be a bajillion new modelers coming into the fold at the same time as me because I figure you experienced guys already have plenty of paint.
• Having to pay for tons of shipping: There aren't that many local hobby shops that sell kits anymore. Hobby Lobby is the closest I got, and while they're surprisingly good at some paints and supplies, the model selection is limited. So I have to buy from out of state or drive across the city.
• Research is trickier than it should be: this is the main driver of today's blog post. I am trying to understand what paints I need and it's turning out to be this weird confluence of historical research, uncertainty, and trying to find paint that's in-stock (see above). 

So about that third point on research. It started with the snap-together Spitfire Mk I kit I mentioned a couple posts back. I just want to know what color to paint the interior and exterior of the airplane, and you'd think that would be simple. But no, it's quite an ordeal. There are many differing opinions on it, and then I learned that in the field during WWII, some airfields were better equipped than others, so it was common for aircrews to just use what was on hand to approximate the colors designated by the air ministry. It turns out that the realistic paint scheme could be one of several, depending on the time of the war, the official specifications, and what teams in the field had to work with. It was really frustrating to spend hours reading messages in forums and books and still not be sure what to do. 

Then I remembered that the guys that built the online game War Thunder were super rivet-counter types and had done a good job recreating aircraft in that game. I popped into the game to try out some aircraft, and there are some excellent examples of paint schemes in there, and they do have examples of many aircraft from all different services. You can see exterior camouflage and then jump into the cockpit on a test flight and see the interior colors and also the details. They even added weathering. 

It's not an exhaustive set of schemes, but I think I do trust the Gaijin guys to have done a lot of research and the colors there are probably pretty accurate and won't embarrass you if you use them as guides. And there is it, in the screenshots below, the interior green used by the Brits.

Eventually, you can find out enough to get started without War Thunder's help. But using WT can save some time if you want a quick reference, in color, right on your PC. And it's free to use. 

 

Review: ICM model kit BM-13-16 Multiple Launch Rocket System (ZiL-131)

I'm working on this kit right now. It was an inexpensive throw-in I added to an online order at Micro-Mark and even though 1/72 scale vehicles aren't my thing I figured for cheap it would be good practice. ICM has a good reputation for detail, so why not for less than ten bucks?

Welp, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. This is an early ICM kit, with an impressive amount of detail for a 72nd scale kit, but there were also many challenges.

27-Jul-2025 Update: Review rescinded. Do not buy this kit. I've updated the cons section under "fitment" with the reason this kit was ultimately a DNF (Did Not Finish).

PROS

• Detail: Most of the parts are really sharp with detail. 
• The truck cab's outer shell comes molded in a single piece and the front grille has fine slots to represent the gaps between the grill's bars and it's really a good looking part. 
• The side-mounted rear view mirrors are impressive with super thin plastic mounting rods, but they look pretty good, given the tiny size.
• The lattice of steel bars used to construct the rocket rack looks good too, though it was tough to build.
• The kit includes the headlight guards and they look good on the model. In some 1/35 scale kits, you might have to buy third-party add-ons to get this or better versions of it.
• Building the underside of the truck involves very nearly putting together a whole drive train and differential set. Automobile kits in 1/24 often have a unibody molding for the underside, so again, for a 1/72 kit this is pretty awesome.
• Cheap: It's a small kit but I think it retails for $16 and I got it on clearance for $6. But even regular price, it's quite affordable by modern standards.

CONS

• Errors 
• Instructions mislabel some of the part numbers
• The spare tire rack has a pair of vertical slats on the outside edges of the rack that appear to help secure the tires, but there's no way you can fit the tires into the rack with these slats on. Even the box art picture doesn't have these, showing just the spare tires protruding beyond the width of the truck.
• There is a fixture to mount stabilizers on the rear of the truck. The stabilizing struts are glued to a brace that is supposed to fit over the rear width of the main chassis. But the brace is molded to the same width of the chassis, not the roughly 1/8 inch larger that it needs to be. So I had to cut the brace in the middle, glue each half to its respective side on the truck, then fill the gap with a piece of plastic. This error and the spare tire issue reminded me of software where it's pretty obvious the people that design the software don't use it.
• The rocket rack is an impressive array of I-beam like parts that glue together and fit into the lattice frame. Each I-beam has three small rods molded into it that glue to the next beam. that But some of the moldings are not correct. 
• One of the I-beams has only short connecting rods so it doesn't go the proper distance to connect to the next beam. 
• Another I-beam had two rods and was missing a third.
• The rods on the outer edges of the assembly are supposed to have molded nubs to represent the start/end of the connecting rod. Only one was molded to have it so it provides a nice end cap on one side. There was no other I-beam with the small nubs molded on the one side. As luck would have it, I had made an earlier error in my assembly and placed one of the I-beams out of order; I had to cut the three connecting rods off of that beam to convert it from a male into a female connection. I was able to further cut down the rods and simulate the nubs by gluing these small components on the opposite side of the assembly. I kit bashed from parts in the same kit, if you will. (updated thought: it is possible I incorrectly assembled the first I-beam backwards, meaning the beam that had too-short rods was actually supposed to be turned around so the shorter rods could be the starter nubs I was missing, but the instructions do not indicate this, and if that were the case, how was the back of this part then supposed to be attached to the other beams?).
• Fitment is a mixed bag overall, but worst in the places that counted most. Some parts went together perfectly. Others were not sized well (such as the stabilizer bracket, noted above), or required tricky assembly. Unfortunately, once I started to put together the final steps, the rocket launcher assembly didn't fit on the chassis well, and the wheels impacted with the wheel well edges. This was a bridge too far, and I officially quit on the kit here. 
• Instructions: in addition to the errors, it could have done a better job of breaking down the order of assembly, and some parts, like the lattice framework to hold up the rocket rack, could have been broken down into more steps and pictures.
• Some flash needed to be cleaned up, but it wasn't too bad. 
• Very fine parts broke easily. When I first reviewed the sprues after opening the box, I was very impressed with the detail ICM was able to put into the plastic kit. This kit does not have any photo etched parts. And I thought, "wow, with detail this good, who needs the hassle of photo etch?". Then as I was working with the long thin rods used for engine tubing or long handles, they would break just from the force of cutting off the sprue. And I would say, "Oh, that's why they have photo etch." Some of these I was able to carefully repair with cement, others I just gave up on.

Conclusion

Ok, so the kit has problems. In addition to the listed cons, I also had a mistake where I swapped two parts that looked very similar, though that's on me for not paying better attention and why I didn't list it in the cons. 

There are also super tiny parts that I either lost or broke. I mention the easily broken ones in the cons, but losing stuff is my fault, and you have to expect some tiny parts in a 72nd scale kit.

This is a kit that I believe is early in the ICM lineage so I can chalk up some of this to youth. I don't know when ICM officially started making models but some reports are that it was in the early 1990s. That's where this kit is from, so it's quite possible the company learned a lot since then and their modern kits are much better.

Would I have bought this kit if I knew better? Yes, I'd still buy this kit. It was quite reasonably priced, I learned a lot with it, its detail is very good for the scale, and if you are dedicated you can build it up into a very presentable model. 27-Jul-2025 Update: NO, I would not buy this kit again, even at one dollar. When I first wrote the review, I had most of the cab and payload assemblies done, and still hadn't done the last step of affixing them to the chassis. I made the mistake of prematurely giving the model a passing grade based on the construction being 90% complete. The cab appears to fit ok to the chassis, but the rocket launcher platform fit is so poor I just gave up. In conjunction with the other errors and fit problems, I have to rescind my previous assessment and issue a DNF on this kit.