Got all parts but the canopy painted with the White Auto Air base coat. There is a lot of upside to these paints, non toxic, available in small quantities, cheap, cleanup with water and easy to spray. I'm drying the paint with my covering heat gun. That way turn around time between coats in just a couple of minutes. A single 4oz bottle nearly covered the all of the parts. Colors are going to take fewer coats and less paint.
The first two coats are very light coats. I don't know if you have ever seen the back of a ceramic glazed sink or tub but that what the first coat looks like. Here what it looks like after the first coat:
The third coat is a "medium" filler coat to achieve full coverage. Don't touch the parts until you know they are dry. The paint will go from shiny to dull and hazy when dry. It's subtle but can be seen under florescent light.
The major downside of this paint system for us is that often we want to color match the parts we are painting to the covering. You can't get AutoAir color matched, you have to do it yourself by hand. I'm taking the approach of buying a few colors close to the color I want and mixing them. I start in small drop sized quantities mixed with my finger on some white card. Once I get an idea of the ratio I mix up a larger batch and try to err on the light side of the final color. Then i can tweak it by adding more of the darker color as needed.
I'm trying to match Monokote Yellow using Auto air Lemon Yellow and Sun Gold Yellow. A mix of about 3:1 seemed to work out nicely. I shot the wheel pants as a test. I think its a little light but I wont know until I can see it in the daylight tomorrow:
It took just 2 coats to achieve coverage over the white base coat so less paint is required for color coats than the base coat.