MODERN HELLENIC AIR FORCE GHOST SCHEME

Greek fighters over the Aegean

The Hellenic Air Force is among the most active in Europe, because its machines keep readiness over an archipelago of thousands of islands and take off daily to identify foreign aircraft. Its present-day combat aircraft carry a low-contrast gray scheme designed so that a machine disappears over the sea and over a parched coast before an opponent's pilot can pick it out by eye. The four shades in this package cover that scheme.

Specifically they are the medium gray to Federal Standard 35237 with a bluish tint, the aggressor gray 36251, the light sea gray 36307 and the dark gray 36320. The combination follows the so-called ghost scheme, which rests on a pair of close tones divided by soft transitions, complemented by a darker shade on the spine of the fuselage and on the leading edges.

For a model that means very fine work. The boundaries between the fields are not sharp, so they are sprayed with thinned paint from a short distance and at low pressure, or over a temporary mask raised a few millimeters above the surface. Anyone who defines an edge with tape stuck down hard will get a look that the real machines do not have.

The shades are more universal than they seem. The same palette suits a number of other present-day machines with gray camouflage, because the Federal Standard is shared internationally and individual air arms draw the same tones from it.

The resulting gloss deserves attention as well. A machine in service is neither entirely matte nor glossy, because only some places on the airframe are polished. A matte base complemented by a slightly satin varnish on the fuselage therefore looks more faithful than a uniformly finished surface.