Hi all
I'm close to start painting the SA-4 Ganef from Trumpeter. For the missiles the instructions call for a Medium Gunship Grey which obviously is far too dark.
Airfix Model World features an article with Aluminum and Silver missiles and AFV Modeller features another article with no paint reference but with a grey color for the missiles.

My understanding is that the missile body was painted some light grey shade with some panels aluminum or silver.
Which grey reference would be suitable? I mainly use Tamiya paint and only acrylic paints.
I haven't been able to determine the right color from reference pictures hence this post.

TIA
Olivier

https://data3.primeportal.net/artillery/vojta_micek/2k11_krug_sa-4_ganef/images/2k11_krug_sa-4_ganef_23_of_25.jpg



Looks like oxidised, or maybe anodised to natural oxide colour, aluminium to me.
It could be some sort of heat resistant paint with an "oxidised aluminium" colour.
Use some very fine grained metalizer paint?
/ Robin

That's the issue Robin. Some pictures show a kind of aluminum color while others show a light grey depending on the light conditions when the pictures were taken.

Olivier

The majority of the images I found showed the aluminium colour.

This one is interesting since it looks as if the boosters have rusted -> metallic gray sheen comes from some kind of "metallic" paint


This one looks like paint and I would call this a very light metallic grey. To get close to this I would go for some of the "natural" metal paints, maybe some variant of "aluminium" by Alclad.

https://www.migjimenez.com/en/67-alclad-ii-metallic-paints

A "metallic" paint can look like an ordinary dull paint in some lighting conditions but an ordinary plain paint can not look like metallic in ANY lighting conditions.
/ Robin

Are those war reserve missiles or trainers? Didn't the Soviets use silver to indicate trainers or dummies?

KL

Thanks for the link Robin. I'll probably try some metallic grey paint. Tamiya one is too dark for sure. Any idea on how to enlighten it without "deleting" the metallic sheen?

Olivier

Nope: Very little experience of painting large surfaces with metallic sheen. Doesn't happen so often with tanks and trucks .....
Maybe ask in the Aircraft forums?
/ Robin

Haven't got the faintest idea ...
I asked google about SA-4 Ganef images and I didn't see any non-metallic ones but that doesn't count as evidence for anything ....

Edit:
Googled for 2K11 krug instead and found this:


Hard to tell the colour but it does look light, i.e. not Russian green or anything like that.
Could still be a dummy warhead on a flight capable missile ...

This video contains parts that look like a live fire exercise:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jc1H_ZxaxLc

I got he missiles painted and I'm quite satisfied with the result. The metallic grey does not shine at a distance but has the nice sheen at close distance.





Olivier