Airbrush - first success, without happy end

I had a spare hour today, so I decided to give airbrushing another try. Since I read that darker colours spray easier than lighter ones, I decided to give the black primer another go. I painted the display stands for the Starfury and the Borei submarine. (If I mess them up, I can strip the paint and start over)

Once dry, the resulting layer of paint is perfectly smooth. I could never hope to achieve this result by handbrushing. I know some modellers who can do this with a brush, but I never had the steady hand nor the patience to get this result. This is exactly why I wanted the airbrush and I'm hapy with this first result.

(The picture isn't very clear, so you'll have to take my word for it, but I plan on buying a new camera anyway.)

I was almost ready to call this session my first success, BUT ... I noticed the paint in the paintcup had small bubbles in it. There must be a small airleak somewhere. I took it apart, cleaned it, same old story. After visually verifying that everything was clean, I filled the cup with water and turned on the compressor. Which is when the following happened :

The tiny bubbles are now huge bubbles. The needle is still in place, so no air should be coming in AT ALL. I can only deduce that the nozzle is not fitting properly on the airbrush body because of the tiniest spec of dirt or paint, so I took it apart and dropped all the parts in a glass of cleaner and called it a day. 

We'll find out in a day or two if I can fix this, if it needs further cleaning or if I'll take a trip to the hobby store and ask them to take a look at it.