A lot of good info there as it pertains to the prototype. But as Wolf said earlier in the thread, as it relates to judging a scale model, the judge goes by what the submitted data pack presents, especially so when it comes to colors, as the model is expected to match the declared reference photo. Doesn't help much if the real color, as documented on a blueprint, say, is something different than what the photo actually shows.

A good example is a situation I encountered with the Super Chief II. The Super Chief has an interstage adapter that mates the Sustainer to the Booster - the photo below is a cut out from the actual photo I used in my data set. One can see that the color of that interstage is something like a yellowish tan, and in fact in Peter Alway's ROTW 1999 Supplement he declares that color as tan. But I have an actual blueprint from Aerojet for that part, and the declared finish on the print is Zinc Chromate, a color much different than tan.

I searched my local hobby shop for a color that matched what I had in the photo, and used that on the model.

The problem here is that photos age over time and with that comes fading and other color distortions, which in time no longer represent the actual color of the prototype. If I had wanted to build an historically accurate model, I probably would have used Zinc Chromate as the color; but since I was building a model for judging, the photos ruled.

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John
YORF #003
SAM #004