The Unofficial Airfix Modellers' Forum

Another SMW Kit Swap find from a few years back. This will have to be the usual Swedish version as shown on the box art as the other two options for this boxing are missing from the decal sheet. I loved the Airfix version of the kit when I was a kid but never had this Revell version. This will be a quick OOB build and then if time then permits I may enter my Hasegawa 1/48 version of the same scheme into this GB.



Cheers
Al.

hi Al wecome to the GB ,I don't think i've ever seen one of the revell drakens built up and a funky scheme aswell was that an in service camouflage scheme
cheers craig

There is a very nice build of a Hasegawa 1/48 on Britmodeller from April 2014 which comfirms that the colour scheme on the vintage Revell box art is authentic:
The first Drakens were delivered in bare aluminium, but in 1961, Swedish Air Force painted a number of Drakens, Lansens and Tunnans in different patterns of green and blue, to find a substitute for the traditional Swedish camouflage in green with blue-grey undersides.
so I shall reproduce it on my build which will commence shortly.
A review of various 1/72 Drakens says my Revell boxing is little more than a toy (although they did like the equivalent Airfix boxing of the same period for the accuracy of the body shape) - which for a 1968 molding is understandable, so I hay have to scratch build some cockpit detail at the very least.

For some reason I have actually begun working on a horrendous Aeroplast 1/72 Draken - probabl;y saw it as more of a chanllenge but began to regret it almost immediately. I remember I only bought it because it had Danish marking on the box art - in hindsight it would have been better to keep the decals and bin the rest of the kit! The irony now is that I remember giving the decals away, so will have to do it as a Swedish bird.

I did a quick bit of research and someone on Britmodeller had this to say about the Aeroplast offering:
Aeroplast's Draken is a modified old Revell kit - which is wrongly shaped and with wrong panel lines, wrong decals and also the wrong version for a Danish Draken. It tries to look like the earliest Draken, the J 35A, Danish Drakens, the F-35/RF-35/TF-35 were based on the J 35F which among other differences has a different canopy and exhaust cone.

So - not a lot going for it as you can see. I noticed immediately that the front nose wheel arrangement was totally fictitious, so decided she would be wheels up. This meant sourcing a pilot - and a seat! The kit comes with no cockpit detail whatsoever!
I had a seated pilot from an old vandalised Matchbox F-101 Voodoo so gave him the position of Sven Pilotson for this build.

I then discovered one of the front wheel well doors was missing so sanded down a bit of sprue (sic) to fit instead.

I applied some filler but realised I was flogging a dead horse in trying to re-capture and realistic profile of the original, so have decided to call it quits in terms of building, and will hastily just apply paint and decals and then hide it somewhere very dark!

















Cheers
Al.

At least the Draken is distinctive enough that no one will mistake it for what it is.

hi Al i think its going to look good in that interesting swedish draken A scheme and the GB has been extended for 2 weeks to give a few of us a chance to finish
cheers craig