thank you for all the replies, gentlemen, before i read some of them though i rushed to the local hobby people store (its a chain in the western US) and looked at the Tamiya sand #TS46. Tamiya says its a flat but it looked too brown by just a little. The other choice was Testors model master spray paint, its a pale yellow, i chose that and got two cans (huge tank nothing like the 1/35 monogram Mark IV's i used to built by the dozens in the 1970's). Figuring the shade could be seen as faded, and it sure is pale. I figure i will have to fade the combo colors too somewhat...
may just spray some sand spray paint into a container and add a few drops to the airbrush bottle...should have got white. Anyway here is the tank, primered,
the hull, and wheels already painted the sand, look almost good enough to eat crunch crunch
and in the Model master #1963, FS 33722 "modern desert sand". Opinions please if anyone has them,
Lower hull. Still planning to add a brace screwed on the top of the hull, but havent figured out exactly how the upper hull touches and how much to shorten the brace. Also i bought some strong magnets, and going to modify the hull so the magnets hold the upper hull on instead of all those screws.
i'd love to hear them, right now it is drying overnight and not putting the combo colors on til tomorrow at earliest. It is of course a mistake to not let the paint set before changing it more but a mistake i've made more then once.
I purchased these colors for the brown and green, plus a rust paint. They are
Model master field drab #FS30118 (green) (all the MM paints were $3.69/half ounce)
MM Rust (for the tracks) #1785
MM Military Brown #FS30117
MM Oliver Drab #FS34087 (more green)
Testors Airbrush thinner (i saw a video on airbrushing where the guy says clean the airbrush with windex instead of the costly thinner, makes sense to me) $7 - 1 3/4 oz)
Testors "FL Rubber" (the guy at the store recommended it for brown mixing, to darken) $2/quarter ounce)
Also i got some silicone shock oil (for the wheels-the inner road wheels are glued on caps at the factory so i dont want to just rip them off after the first one i did. And the wheels still stick some. So once the paint sets i will try a drop of this silicone oil on my test piece, a one pound plastic coffee container i painted for practicing the combo colors with the airbrush- to see if it ruins the paint).
