"Great RLM match for Luftwaffe Colours in VAllejo and others" Topic

Once you find the RLM no of the paint used for German aircraft in ww2 find the correct match using these cool charts. Note some Vallejo are missing but you can find a suitable match that is close.

link

Wow! Thanks for that link. I was just about to begin that search from scratch

Thanks, very useful.

This raises an issue that really annoys me. If you look at some of the paint ranges (I'll single out Vallejo but in fairness it isn't just them) some of the matches are really poor.

Now I don't mind that if it the suggested paint is from their generic range (like Model Color) where someone has proposed a nearest match, but when the paint is described with a specific standard (like RLM 65) there is no excuse for a poor match – it is simply false advertising.

If a paint is labelled with a RLM, BS, FS number, then the match should be pretty good – not asking for perfection but some of them are so far off there is no excuse. If it was some other product you would be returning it as not performing as advertised but because it is paint and only a few bucks we seem to put up with it.

Two shades of RLM65.

I notice that there are two shades of RLM65, one that is light blue and one that is darker and more grey.

Am I correct in thinking that the light blue version is an earlier colour and was superseded by the darker grey colour.

So if I am looking at the Battle of Britain I should use the light blue colour.

I got caught out by this when starting to paint up my Blood Red Skies aircraft.

Sprayed the original RLM 65 71.008 that I bought for an Me262 a while back and it was far too strong a blue. I mixed 50:50 with their RLM 76 Pale Blue Grey 71.046 and it came out looking about right (at least to my eyes and the profiles I was using).

Bought the RAF and early Luftwaffe sets and it includes the paler RLM 65, but if you spray these colours directly they will look too dark.

Reason for this is what I understand is called the 'scale lightening effect'. If you spray the correct colour on to a small scale miniature it will look wrong, you need to lighten the mix progressively depending on the scale of the model you are painting.

I've just done a test spray with RLM02 Grau from the Vallejo early Luftwaffe set, and lightened it 30% with white (3 drops white for every 10 drops of RLM colour with a couple of drops of thinner for luck) and that looked good on the 1:200 BRS models, just the right shade of grey with a greenish tinge to it.

This seems to be a really tricky colour to get right, there is a lot of variation across paint manufacturers.

Mark Barker
UK