1/48 Hasegawa SAAB J 35J Draken

Gallery Article by Johan Elvin on June 28 2010

 

This is my first submission to ARC, after seeing all the talent that's out there I would like to share a few pictures of my own.

This build is on one of my absolute favorite aircraft of all time, the SAAB J 35 Draken.
Hasegawa has done a good job capturing the right look of the Draken.

This is the final version of the Draken, the J 35J, depicted in the air superiority gray on gray colour scheme.
In fact, this particular aircraft (F10 "39" ser. no. 35539) was the first Draken to have the gray scheme applied to it.

Aftermarket details used:
Aires: Wheel Bays #4376
          Exhaust Nozzle #4378
          Gun Bay #4408
Eduard: Interior Detail set #49417
             Exterior Detail set #48597
             Bording Ladder #48598
Quick Boost: Spine Air Intakes #48188
                      IR-Detector #48187
Maestro Models: Dropped Flaps and Elevons #4808
                            Turned Brass Pitot Tubes #4805

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About the Kit:
It is of the standard Hasegawa quality, it has nice engraved panel lines and an overall good fit.

Exterior details of the fuselage has little more you could ask fore. Where it falls short in my opinion is in the cockpit area and wheel wells/landing gear. But in those places Aires and Eduard comes to the rescue.

The build was pretty straight forward, except for the joint of the rear fuselage to the main fuselage, which required a lot of sanding and filling to get a doesn't fit. The joint at the air intakes also required a bit of attention.

Installation of the Aires wheel wells and gun bay needed, as always, a lot of grinding of the plastic to get them to fit, but it's well worth the effort.

I added some scratchbuilt hydraulic pipes and wires to the landing gear legs, to liven things up a bit more.

I also added the Maestro Models dropped flaps and elevons.

Paint and Decals
After priming and preshading, I painted the two tone gray colours with Humbrol acrylic paints.
For the natural metal areas I used Alclad 2.
As these birds had a tendency to get very dirty, I gave it a rather heavy wash with lot of streaks using dry pastels.

I used the kits decals, as they depict an individual I always wanted to build, and they went on with no problems.
Everything was then sealed with future and a couple of cotes of matte varnish.

Final Bits
The Rb24J (AIM-9J) Sidewinders were taken from Hasegawas weapon set.
The Rb27 (AIM-26B) Falcons had to be scratchbuilt, as was the A5 Pylons just outboard of the Rb27's.
In all my reference pictures the J 35J has an empty set of A5 Pylons on the most outboard positions, so I had to add them to my model.
I also added a few scratchbuilt remove before flight flags.

Conclusion
Except for the minor fit problems, this is a really good model of typical Hasegawa qualities and was a real pleasure to build. And with the addition of the aftermarket details it really captures the Draken as it should.

I was really pleased with the outcome of the model, and i will definitely build more Hasegawa Drakens in the future.

Johan Elvin

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Photos and text © by Johan Elvin