I used to ocassionally paint cars with Centari. I didn't even know DuPont still made it until I talked with a guy from Dallas who had a JD Falcon at our Tulsa meet that told me he painted it with Centari. It is just an acrylic enamel. Pittsburgh and other manufacturers all make an equivalent product.
I bought it in half pints, which is the smallest you can buy. Of course, your red-based paints cost the most. Hundreds of colors to choose from. You also need to buy the appropriate reducer and gloss-hardner additive. Now, one trick to saving money is to purchase a "generic" additive. I bought 8 ounce Transtar Super Wet Look Acrylic Enamel Catalyst 8105. That was $6.95 and enough for two or three planes. Smallest DuPont equivalent was $34.95.
I mixed two parts paint to one part reducer. For six ounce batch, I added 1/2 ounce catalyst. Real easy to do with those little plastic hobby paint cups. I only mixed three-ounce batches of the red and metallic charcoal and had waaaayyy too much mixed. I think I used about 5 ounces of actual white paint putting three coats on the plane. I only needed one wet coat, but I had some left, so I put a second coat on. I didn't feel I put it on wet enough, so I added a third coat of white. One pass of the read and charcoal.
Another tip is DO NOT use the green 3M tape that is high tack for masking. I was originally going to have some space between the red and charcoal, but after pulling up that green tape, I had two small spots on the outboard wing where it lifted white. Now if you let it dry more than four hours, maybe I could have used the green tape, but after the first mistake, I went with the lower tack blue tape and had no problems at all.
Applied properly, it is a tough, flexible and glossy material--at least it was on the cars I painted. I guess time will tell with this plane.
Underneath, the wings and tail are OzCover, scuffed with 600 sandpaper. Fuse is silkspan using only nitrate (except inside engine/fuel tank bay, which is fuel proofed with butyrate). Two coats of nitrate, followed by two coats of nitrate/microballoons/thinner. Then I covered entire plane with two coats of spray can auto primer and sanded with 400 sand paper.
It's not perfect and has some flaws I could have done better. But it has the least mistakes of any plane I have built so far.