Hi,
the general look of the plane was glossy enough to reflect cat's paws or Galchenko himself on the horizontal stabilizer as visible also on those prictures.
Photo also shows that plane surface was in a quite good conditions, repainted quite often. Not enough time for colors to fade significantly.
Some time ago I thougt that repainting done in 1942 could have been done with new AMT colors when old AII were already discontinued that time. When airbrushed AKAN acrylics, that square area (AMT-4) was lighter than background (AII Green) while photo shows square area darker than background. AMT-4 was not the right choice.
I saw a profile (I think it was in some Osprey book) where the square area covering the numbers was even brown ;-)
There was a lot of improvisation in the case of Galchenko's plane - no stars on fuselage or rudder, latter no stars even on the underwings, board number ovepainted, bands of the dark color do not follow any official NKAP scheme, etc.
So, now I tend to think that in 1941 they used black and/or also improvised black+AII green mixture while in 1942 black and/or improvised black+AMT-4 mixture for dark color.
Finaly, white bands of the winter camo also represents an improvisation, as shown in my first post in this topic.
As a modeller I have to make a decission at some moment and to paint the kit somehow. Even if one choice is only a bit more probable than other (51:49).
Unfortunately my experience shows that new, important info appears just after the kit is finished
That's why I rather submit the winter camo alternative to discussion before I apply it on the kit.
Thank you again for your imputs.
Regards,
66misos