What are the best paints and colors for French World War 1aircraft?

[James Reagan]

What AKI colors best match French WW1 aircraft colors?  Are there other paints out there that are good for the above tasks?  I have a number of Tamiya paints I can also mix. Is there a good book available about the above questions? This is my first post here so bear with me.

[gcn]

Hi James and welcome.

If you already are familiar with tamiya you could do a lot worse than use the mixes recommended by wingnut wings. I did my Salmson according to their instructions and it looked good to my mk1 eyeball.

Also there’s this https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235077541-bilmodel-makers-paints-french-aircraft-colours-from-world-war-i-until-world-war-ii-1900-1945/

Or this

https://forum.ww1aircraftmodels.com/index.php?topic=9899.0

[Stuart Malone]

James,

If you haven't already found it, there's a discussion of French five color here:

https://forum.ww1aircraftmodels.com/index.php?topic=9899.0

As far as matching to AK, I'd recommend finding the colors you like, be they whatever brand, then use a cross reference chart or app to find that color in the specific AK line your using; acrylic, 3rd gen acrylic, or real color.  The mobile app iModelKit might be helpful.  I don't know if they have any of the AK lines though.

Stuart