I picked up a can of Plastic Soldier Company's Dunkelgelb from Element Games back in February, at a reasonable £7.50...probably should get around to trying it out then....
Firstly the good; I have seen people claim that PSC Dunkelgelb spray is both a perfect match for Vallejo's Middlestone, which is generally accepted as a decent approximation of Dunkelgelb, (and more pertinently, pretty easy to get hold of) and nothing like it at all, with photos to prove it. As far as I can tell, for me it is spot on. The finish is also very nice.
Pretty bang on!
Next, the indifferent; I had seen a video on Youtube of someone applying this spray to several tanks in numerous gentle passes, over and over and over. (Admittedly this is a fair technique for avoiding clogging the details). Turns out it was more to do with the spray itself than any technique. The spray seems to be very low 'velocity'; very little paint comes out with each pass, so you do indeed find yourself slowly building up layers of paint on the model, spending time that would no doubt have ruined your model if you'd had a GW primer can in your hand.
The other issue is that aforementioned time; I could have sprayed nearly 1000 points of models with a GW primer in the time it took me to do one halftrack. As always, more haste, less speed!
It strikes me that the paint could well be best used over a primer, but I could find no real consensus on that. Regardless the finish it provided for me over bare plastic is more than good enough for me to continue to use it in this fashion. Equally the finish was flawless in ambient conditions that have seen GW sprays produce horrible grainy textures.
I would question how much of the propellant is used up with the multiple light passes technique however. It could be using very little each time as very little paint comes out or I could end up with a very heavy paint-full, gas-empty can one day. I'm not an expert in these matters so will just have to wait and see...
Not fun...
Now sadly the bad; the whole reason I finally got around to using the spray in the first place was that I picked it up on a whim last week whilst on a tank-building drive. Unfortunately the can was stuck to the shelf by a horrible, sticky, yellowish gunk stinking of aerosol that was leaking from the bottom inside rim of the can. I bought the can in person too and it gave no indication of being defective for 6 months, so I can't blame it being blind-delivered, nor any abuse on my own part; it has merely sat on a shelf since the day I bought it.
This is probably just a case of bad luck but I have been using GW's overpriced sprays for 20-odd years like a good little fanboy and I have never had any physical issue with a spray can.
The other thought is that the leaking can is the cause of the low velocity of paint spray, but I have used it multiple times now and got the same consistent results; the paint comes out gently and evenly, with no degradation of pressure or change in paint flow. One can is hardly a great sample to judge by either way!
Overall I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised by this product. Having picked it up on a whim and not expecting much save maybe a half-decent base to work from I was half-hoping once I found out it was leaking that it would be trash and I could get rid of it - now I have to keep it somewhere - a pleasant little (aerosol-induced) headache to have...
It certainly provides a means of skipping the first stage of airbrushing a Dunkelgelb basecoat with paint from a pot, and anything that smoothes the course of my hobby progress get two thumbs up from me, and I would buy it again assuming no further leakage issues!
Guess I'll have to spray all my late-war German vehicles then!
Through the magic of the internet....ta-dah!
Handro
Thought for the day; 'To question is to doubt'.
