The latest for your viewing pleasure:
I'm not used to painting models before final assembly but, as stated earlier, it's necessary due to all the spots that will be inaccessible, what with two wings and rigging all over the place. I started by painting all the white which is a 50/50 mix of Tamiya flat white and Future. This was painted over Tamiya primer and took multiple passes over two or three sessions.
I then tackled the upper camo by spraying mixed colours freehand. My initial colours did not turn out as I well as I would have liked, the Dark Slate Grey being close but the Extra Dark Sea Grey being too washed out. Here you can barely see the demarcations between the two colours.
Below is the newer version. Here I used straight Tamiya FX-24 for the EDSG. The DSG is an odd mix I read over at Britmodeller that is attributed to Ron Sutherland but I like how it turned out: To one bottle of XF-22 RLM Grey, add 35 drops of XF7 (red), and 125 drops of XF1 (flat black). As I didn't want to use a whole bottle, I had to ratio the above down to a usable scale and found that I had to lighten it a touch with white as I probably had too much black in the mix.
Using the same colours, I sprayed the fuselage and horizontal stabs freehand as well.
Here's a closer look. The wires on the tail planes did get in the way when spraying up to the fin but I think I was able to get it done well enough. Some minor touch ups of the white will be needed in various spots.
Almost forgot the cowl which got a narrow stripe of EDSG. I had previously masked the collector ring and then also painted the narrow band of lighter bare metal behind the ring before doing the white.
Those patchy areas on the wing uppers will disappear after a shot of gloss clear and that's what I did before calling it a night. I'll let the clear coat fully dry before tackling any assembly of the wings.
Thanks for checking in and for all the input.