Hasegawa's 1/48 scale
SAAB J-35J Draken

by David W. Aungst

Hasegawa's 1/48 scale Draken is available online from Squadron.com

Background

In the middle of my building a gaggle of eight Hasegawa Skyhawk kits, Hasegawa released their 1/48th scale Draken kit.

I picked one up when they came out, just for curiosity sake, and before I realized it, I found myself building it. Sometimes it just happens...

The Kit

This is the new Hasegawa 1/48th scale J-35F/J Draken kit. My background knowledge of the Draken is limited and my available documentation amounts to just the old AeroFax book on the Draken. So, I took on this project as a low-intensity quick-build. Sometimes the best projects are the ones you know next to nothing about.

The kit is molded in the standard gray plastic that most Hasegawa kits are. The scribing is all engraved and quite petite. The breakdown of the major fuselage pieces is top/bottom. Considering the overall shape of the Draken airframe, this makes sense.

The cockpit has raised details and seemed pretty close to what I was seeing in the AeroFax book for what the cockpit looks like. Sweden apparently uses dark green in their cockpits. Hasegawa recommended Dark Green (F.S.34079), but that just seemed way too dark to me. Thus, I decided to use Medium Green (F.S.34102) inside the cockpit. I painted the side consoles and main panel instruments using Interior Black. Picking off a few details in red and dry-brushing in light gray and silver completed the painting of the cockpit.

The cockpit was the only thing that needed doing before I sealed up the fuselage. In very little time, I was ready to do camouflage painting.

I used Testors Model Master enamel paints for most of this project. Any color references here that do not explicitly state the manufacture are Testors Model Master enamel paints.

Hasegawa names some colors in their instructions for the camouflage painting, but they are rather generic name -- Olive Drab, Midnight Blue, and Neutral Gray -- with no reference to any international color specification (other than the Gunze and Mr Color paint numbers). To figure these colors out, I placed a question on the HyperScale forum and was directed to the IPMS Stockholm website. While Drakens are painted in Swedish colors, the IPMS Stockholm site lists closely matching F.S. numbers for the camoulfage -- Green Drab (F.S.34086), Non-Specular Sea Blue (F.S.35042), and Air Mobility Gray (F.S.36173). Since I owned all these colors in the Testors Model Master line, I counted myself lucky.

On looking at these colors and comparing them to color pictures of Drakens, I felt the recommended topside colors seemd too rich. The color pictures showed that Dakens actually faded rather badly. To fix the colors, I "faded" them by mixing them in 5:1 ratios with Neutral Gray (F.S.36270). I liked these mixed colors better than the unmixed colors. Right or wrong, this is how I came up with colors for my Draken.

To further distress the paint scheme, after I painted the camoulfage, I post-shaded the airframe panels in extremely thin mixtures of Neutral Gray and Interior Black. This did a lot to improve the look of the model in my eyes.

A quick gloss coat had me ready to apply decals.

I used the kit decals. All I was interested in was a non-descript green-blue Draken with big numbers on the wings, and the kit decals provided this in the box. The decals were prone to silvering, even using setting solution over a nice gloss finish. When I sliced the big wing numbers to address the silvering, I inadvertantly left dark hask lines running through the white numbers -- YUK !!! I fixed this with a quick brush-painting of flat white. This made the numbers a little less uniform in their white intensity, but since this is not a Nats competition piece, I did not really care.

For weathering, I used my typical style of thinned down enamel paint washes and air brush shading. I finished the weathering with some dry brushing to pop out the surface details. For a more complete discussion of what I do to weather my models, see my posting on "Weathering Aircraft".

Finishing Touches

Most everything you attach to a Draken is unpainted metal -- landing gear, fuel tanks, etc... So, I had a ton of sub-assemblies to paint in steel metalizer. A black wash and some dry brushing in silver made them all look appropriately "unpainted".

The landing gear attaches firmly in its locator holes. The nose wheel well doors have little in the way of actuators or hinges, so they are just glued to the appropriate edges of the wheel wells. The main wheel well doors have some actuators (or they attach directly to the landing gear struts).

Sweden uses overall bright green on its weapons. I thought this made a nice contrast with the bottom color on the model and wanted to include some weapons on my Draken. I pulled some AIM-9J Sidewinders out of a Hasegawa F-4 Phantom kit and painted them up in an appropriately bright green color. Sweden refers to these missiles as Rb24J missiles. I mixed the green color with a little Interior Green (F.S.34151) and a lot of Zinc Chromate Green. Whether I got the color right or not, I can not say. But, I like the color.

As is usual, attaching the canopy in the open position completed the project.

Sometimes I pick my projects. Sometimes the projects pick me. I think this was one that picked me. I was not looking to build a Draken, but when the kit came out, I somehow found myself building it. I finished it inside a year, making it the only model that I both started and finished in 2008.

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Model, Text Copyright © 2008 by David W. Aungst
Page Created 31 December, 2008
Last Updated 31 December, 2008

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