ok guys, thank you for your support and let's move on.
My Stingray 3.5
Part 4: painting
Infusion process (again infusion!) does not easily allow “painting on the mould”: dry fibres are stitched and held in place by a spray glue, this is necessary otherwise fibre layers will move with the incoming resin flow, also it is often necessary to correct the position of al misplaced layer and this could cause the paint to separate from the mould. Another problem is related to the release agent: it should be a semi-permanent one otherwise it could be washed away by the resin flow, it is very difficult to paint on such a kind of release agents. I did some tests trying this and the result was a disaster, may be in the future I will try again, last word is not said yet. On the other side it is easily possible to use spray gelcoat but I suspect they are too heavy for an airplane model.
That is why I paint my models with the same processes used on the cars. There are three ways to get it: the first is "direct gloss" 2K PU paint, the second is basecoat + clear coat, the third the same as the second one except for a sanding after the clear coat and then a second layer of clear coat (this is also known as “flowgloss”). The first method is usable only when just one colour is used (paint steps between the colour changes are not well accepted by aermodellers), second method could be used with more than one colour but it should be sanded and polished, third method is the one which grants the best results in any case.
Painting in this way is expensive but the results are pretty good.
Painting schemes: almost any painting scheme is possible until it can be painted using masking tapes (no artistic airbrush), I also own a plotter on which I can cut masking masks to get perfect shapes.
More will follow about assembling and optionals.