US ARMY HELICOPTER COLORS

Paints for American rotary-wing machines

US Army helicopters went through several finishes over a few decades. Machines from the time of the fighting in Southeast Asia wore a dark olive, which from the 1970s was replaced by the flat tone FS 34031. It spread among rotary-wing types so widely that the name Helo Drab stuck to it. In dry regions sandy and gray-green tones were added to it so that a machine would stand out less over parched country.

What you will find in the box

• Olive Drab FS 34087, a dark olive base
• US Army Helo Drab FS 34031
• Sand FS 30277, a light sandy tone
• Woodland Desert Sage FS 34201

All four bottles hold 17 ml. It is a water-thinnable third-generation acrylic that can be applied with a brush or an airbrush; you adjust the consistency with water or with thinner from the same manufacturer.

How to work with the shades

Stir the contents of the bottle right down to the pigment settled at the bottom, otherwise the tone comes out lighter than it should. Build the coverage gradually: let a thin first coat flash off and only the second one gives full coverage. Before a wash it pays to go over the surface with gloss varnish, because on a flat surface the pigment is drawn in where it does not belong. The shades can be mixed with one another: a drop of the sandy tone in the olive gives the faded variant that machines take on after standing out in the open for a while. The amount of paint is enough for the camouflage of several models in the usual aircraft scales, including the rotor blades, which use up a surprising amount.