Airbrushing arrays is very annoying but it looks great. For the Mimic team mostly, but if you want to copy our array painting go for it.

3D Print in white (or clear???? - the mast would look really cool in clear and the arrays would be nice to be clear but probably wouldn't be very translucent after painting. definitely should try out clear masts).

Paint the silver part first, I printed a jig that blocks out the arrays, or just mask them off. Paint the entire blanket boxes and mast canister and mast silver and the other end mast tip and blanket boxes there too.

Silver mixing

1 part thinner to 3 parts metallic silver paint. Prefer testors enamel paint.

only 1 bottle of silver required for 8 arrays

Now mask the mast and blanket boxes and mast canister.

We will be painting the array backside gold (technically...... they are orange ish, the solar cells are mounted on kapton tape which looks orange). But we are painting them gold. In some lights they look gold and it looks awesome. The backside of the array is the side with the mast right next to it. The active side has the mast behind it.

Gold thinning

1 part thinner to 3 parts metallic gold paint. also testors enamel paint.

only required 1 bottle of gold

Now we will be painting the active side of the solar arrays. We paint this kind of a dark blue (technically the solar cells are just dark ish, black might be a more appropriate color but in most photos the arrays look blue).

Blue is the most annoying color to airbrush in my experience, it is more viscous and doesn't spray as easily.

Blue thinning/mixing

2:4:9 black to thinner to flat sea blue, testors enamel paint

this required <1 bottle of black, and 3 ish bottles of sea blue, 2 ish bottles of thinner.