Saab J-35Ö Draken
Fliegerregiment 2
Überwachungsgeschwader 1. Staffel
Austrian Air Force 

Model: J-35Ö DRAKEN 'Austrian AIR FORCE' (BP2)

This kit is the Hasegawa 1/72^nd scale kit, and was built out of the box to overcome a bout of AMS. The kit goes together exceptionally well. 

The only addition I made was to glue some 5 thou sheet styrene to the back of the intake pieces to prevent a "see though" model. When I build my second Draken, I will be adding much more detail. A nice feature of the kit, which I decided to use, is the extended RAT under the fuselage. This kit is in the delivery scheme, as now these aircraft carry squadron badges on the tail and large day-glo numbers on top of the wings.

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The only thing I wanted to try on this aircraft was using a "pre-shading" effect for weathering. This involved painting the whole model in Gunze black acrylic and then, using a rag and some iso-propyl alcohol (IPA), removing most of the black paint to leave it in panel lines, and around raised features. When painting the kit, the whole kit is misted in the appropriate base colour, and then only the centre of each panel receives a full application of paint.

After painting, the kit was given a coat of gloss varnish before applying the kit decals. 

The only deviation I made here was to mask and paint the triangle in the centre of the Austrian roundels white, as the kit decals had a yellowish tint to the white. Decals were sealed with another coat of gloss varnish. This was followed with a wash of Windsor and Newton Payne’s Grey oil paint, before a final coat of mat to dull down the gloss a little, giving a satin sheen to the paint.

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Craig