Ant, the only way you can be absolutely certain they will get the colours right is to source the paint here and send it over there, which is what I did last year for the re-paint of Spitfire MJ730. This is an extremely expensive operation though. The next best thing would be to send them a copy of the book ‘British Aviation Colours of World War Two’ which has very accurate paint chips on a chart at the back. This then relies on the painting contractor getting an exact match and choosing satin (semi matt) paint in preference to their default gloss.
A successful re-paint requires the correct colours to be applied with good workmanship in the right places and nothing much else (apart from good preparation of the airframe to receive the paint). Achieving all three in this context will be very challenging but not impossible!
There are very few organisations in the States operating British Warbirds that have applied accurate paint schemes to their aircraft. Doing it by remote control, however well intentioned just leaves too much opportunity for things to go wrong.
regarding the profile at the top of this thread, I saw this when trawling the net after seeing the photo of the CAF machine. It looks like it has been darkened in some way as there is a dark tint to all the colours including theroundels so I am not sure how reliable this is. One of the WIX posters suggested this aircraft was based in New England rather than New Zealand and even claims to have a colour picture of it.
Well done for getting in touch with Mr reiss, at least he can be contacted and is prepared to listen. Whether he will be prepared to pay to have the aircraft re-painted remains to be seen.
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