Since I got the Academy Merkava III kit for a pretty good price, I thought I'd build it.
I have one question though, what would be the closest match for the green seen on Israeli armour, without mixing?
I was thinking maybe Tamiya's NATO green?

Thanks,
Marek

Well, guess I just got smarter...
But what colour would be the closest match to it?
Or could I just use desert yellow instead?

The most appropriate color (if You don't want to mix paints) is Humbrol H84.
Academy Merkava 3- this is very poor and inaccurate kit

But, another burning question remains, would my model be correct, if I would use desert yellow, because I have seen some pictures of Merkava III's in that colour, but I just want to make sure.

No Marek, Bartek told you eveything is important for your tank. There is no green or sand tone in IDF. Humbrol 84 if you want an enamel, Lifecolour UA 035 if you like acrylic.
Photos you looked at, are often misrepresented.

Testor's SAC Bomber Tan is a very good match.

Here's one of the aforementioned links: http://idfmodelling.free.fr/article01.html

Just my two bits but why not try Model Master Israeli Armor Sand/grey. It's an enamel, number 2138. As someone mentioned, depending on the lighting it can have a somewhat greenish hue to it. I used it on a 1/72 Merkava 2 and was quite happy with the result.

Cheers,
Jan

In the opinion of an admittedly small customer base, in Israel, the color is almost spot on, albeit a tad light, which works out quite well due to scale effect. SAC Bomber Tan does indeed have a bit of a greenish hue (not too green, by the way, just a little) to it, and under the "lighting conditions" you speak of, the Mk III looked to me to have the same hue. Not the photo, the actual tank. Your experiences of course may have been a different.

We know that some IDF armour should look greenish, but all that is due to the weather conditions and/or low quality pictures, the most appropiate color for IDF armor is IMO, the Humbrol 84, but if you're talking about GREEN, there are M577 Mugaf painted in green, those Mugaf are usually accompanying IDF MLRSs (command), and the shade of green is the Humbrol 30, according to a French site. Hope this helps. Best regards.

José

That's right.

Ok, one more time. The color the IDF uses is a greyish color that looks different under different lighting conditions.

Does the paint change color in different light by design? (Camo?) Or is it a side effect of another property of the paint?

Just for the sake of argument though, I've seen pictures of their tanks that looked full-on green. Couldn't a person paint theirs to look like an IDF tank in that particular light?

Maybe this site can help.

http://idfmodelling.free.fr/article01.html

Purple with pink polka dots? I don't think it would look like that unless you got boinked on the head first.
Personally, I would try for IDF Sand Gray (or one of the ones listed above) I'm just facinated by paint that shows such a wide variation in apparent color. I do not know of other military paints that do this. Usually there just seems to be a shift in shade (lighter - darker) not color (gray to green)

As for color let me tell you this the Merkava III featured on Israeli armor is the prototype built in the 1990's and was in fact painted that dark green....
...Since this Academy kit closely resembles the prototype it is feasible to paint it this green color as this what it was painted as a non operational color straight from the factory in Haifa. It was this color for unknown reasons. This is not a light affect, the photographs are pretty accurate for colour, for instance I know that is Israeli earth, I know the black, and I know track color.

If you are building a Merkava as a combat unit armored corps vehicle then a sandy karkhi is abetter color to use.

I hope this helps you.[/quote]

So much for that discussion.