many thanks for your comments, the colour has grown on me a bit and it somehow seems a bit lighter now
A shift change at work to help cover holidays has meant not a lot of bench time the last few weeks but i have managed to get a couple of small things done.
firstly the interplane struts are now painted, just a couple of small touch-ups on the aluminium ends and they're good to go
i've also got the exhausts painted, i wanted these to look a bit manky so i stippled on some acrylic plastic putty to give them a bit of texture. That was followed by a couple of coats of rust then matt black on top, left that for a couple of days to dry. Then used a stiff brush that i'd cut the bristles down on a while back with some enamel thinner to slowly remove the black, theory being it should make it look like the rust is coming up through the black paint and the texture will slightly simulate lumpy rust. I've gone a bit too far in some places and a little too much of the white primer is visible but overall they do look manky