Acrysion - přechodová modrá

The middle band of the three-color camouflage

Between the dark blue of the spine and the white underside, American carrier-based machines had a medium saturated blue band. It covered the sides of the fuselage, the fin and often the outer parts of the wings as well. The job of that band was to soften the transition between the two outer tones so that the aircraft would not get a sharp horizontal edge, which would give it away against the sea when seen from the side.

The boundary between the individual bands was not sharp on most machines, it was made by spraying and it looked slightly different in every unit. That is exactly why this shade is a key one in a build: it decides whether the transition reads as natural on a model or as a stuck-on strip.

The spraying procedure

The band is most easily created by free spraying with no masking, with the airbrush held closer to the surface and the flow reduced. It pays to start weakly and to fill the boundary in coat by coat until it merges with the neighboring tone.

The medium is acrylic and it is thinned with water or with the thinner of the same brand. Stir the contents of the container before drawing paint out, a thick residue settles at the bottom that would otherwise stay unused and the shade would then come out lighter than it should be. Flush the residue out of the airbrush right after the work is done, a dried acrylic coat is hard to remove from the nozzle.

It makes sense to try the shade out on a piece of sprue first. Medium blue tones shift somewhat darker once dry than they look wet in the cup, and on a test piece that shows up sooner than on a finished fuselage.

For masking sharp boundaries between the bands, shaped putty or a rope of modeling putty suits better than a hard tape. The sides of the fuselage are rounded and under a firm tape the paint likes to seep in exactly where the curve is sharpest.