Hasegawa 1/72 J.35 Draken

See previous Draken article in the Modeling Madness review archives.

THE KIT

If you paid full retail for this kit and got it home and opened it ... you would be wondering why it cost so much. The kits comes with about 64 parts (3 of them clear). The kit seems to not take up much room in the big box. This particular boxing came with only a single decal option, that of an all gray plane from Flygflottilj 10. The squadron is not given, nor is there a specific squadron decal provided.

It is a typical Hasegawa kit. That is to say that the cockpit details are decals only, the seat kind of resembles the real thing, the wheel wells are not very detailed, and there are no weapons included. The plastic is nearly flawless. The kit looks great in the box, it begs to be built.

CONSTRUCTION

This kit goes together really easily. I was moving along very quickly (considering it was me) until i hit the two main speed bumps in this kit. The intakes and the engine. Neither fit exactly as they are supposed to. The engine meets up nicely with the top of the fuselage, but leaves a gap with the bottom half. It is a sizable gap, and much putty was used to fill it. I was able to make it work and not loose too much detail in the process. The intakes seem to be a bit too small for where they are to be joined up with the fuselage. In hind sight, more dry fitting (sanding down the intakes on the fuselage side some to shrink the opening?) would have saved me a lot of work. These two issues took a lot of momentum out of this build.

As the kit has a natural metal belly, i left off the rear wheel housing until after the NMF was completed. Another tip would be to sand off the locator pins on the engine section. When one looks into the engine, they can be seen. I used weapons from the Hasegawa air-to-air weapons set. I reshaped two falcons to get them to match up to the style of falcons used by the Swedish Air Force.

COLORS & MARKINGS

Model Master paints (acrylic and enamel) were used throughout the project. I used FS 36320 (Dark Ghost Gray) on top, and FS 36495 (Light Gray) on the bottom. I checked which FS numbers the Stockholm IPMS sight had given for an all gray Draken, and though not spot on, it seemed close enough for me. After i finished the kit, i must admit that the bottom color does not look quite right. Masking off the wing in order to paint the NMF leading edges is not an easy task. The bottom of the wing has three small fins on it and they over the NMF. I ended up painting the two sections between these fins by hand and masking and airbrushing the larger sections.

After the painting is complete, the plane looks fairly boring with such a large all gray wing area. Luckily the Swedish came up with a solution, huge orange numbers. (I love it when countries go "low-viz" and then still allow much color on their schemes when it is all said and done.) The kit decals go on very nicely. Rarely have i had issues with applying Hasegawa's decals.

Once the decals are on however, one notices that the film they are on creates an obvious step between the decals and the aircraft. The solution for me was Future. I used Future as a gloss coat before decaling, and added thin layers of it (thinned with Denatured Alcohol and a few drops of none colored soap) on the kit. The whole thing was MM Flatcoated and the finishing bits (gear, doors, weapons, etc.) where added. I used an acrylic wash on the panel lines and then used pastel chalks to dirty up the plane. The NMF belly is often very stained and dirty, especially near the rear tail wheel area.

CONCLUSIONS

I always had it in mind to build a Swedish jet. This airplane has a very unique look to it and once i bought the kit, it really called to me to build it. It is interesting to see a 1960s jet in a modern air-to-air scheme. The decals add just enough color to off set all the gray, but the scheme does not take away from the lines of the plane and the detail of the kit. If you need your "Three Crowns" fix, i would highly recommend this kit.

REFERENCES

World Air Power Journal #17

International Air Power Review #5

Stockholm IPMS website

a few Google searches

Ruud van der Salm

July 2004

KIT #	00047
PRICE:	@23.95 MSRP
DECALS:	one option
REVIEWER:	Ruud van der Salm
NOTES:	"Air Superiority" boxing. Mike Howard photos