Saab J-35 "Draken"

The Kit

It´s a large box with pretty illustration of airplane and Drakkar Viking ship on orange background which really catches everybody´s eye.

Inside there are sprues made of grey plastic material as we know from other Hasegawa kits. In addition you will find the following Eduard products:

Express mask for cockpit, cast wheels, pilot seat, bottom part fuselage and landing hook from the Brassin line. I can´t forget two sheets of photoetched parts, which help us improve the interior of the cockpit and exterior of the plane.
All of that you get for a very good price.

The Build

Construction according to instructions goes fine and I can´t think of anything that would affect your experience in a bad way. You just need to check which parts you are using as they differ with the marking you choose.

No need to worry about usage of resin and photoetched parts as they are very well made and only thing they require is carefulness. I am just a lazy builder and I don´t mind details or dimensional accuracy. My only goal is to build the kit, it´s my form of therapy.

Painting

I chose camouflage A, which represents J 35F Air wing 10, 1st Fighter division, pilot Cpt. Vincent Ahlin. The instructions say that the main camouflage was, unlike the vertical tail area very faded and that´s what I wanted to do.

There we encounter the first and also only problem with the kit and that is that the blue color mentioned in instructions. I didn´t like it and exchanged it for a color which I found on photos from the period. I replaced it with XF 60 Field Blue from Tamiya. At the bottom surfaces, I also did not follow the instructions and used the color XF 53 Neutral Gray, which I then lightened with pigments. Because I wanted the plane in Swedish colors I had to use this quite extravagant camouflage. I would appreciate it if Eduard company had added some more basic camouflage schemes to the selection. Decals were absolutely perfect to use. My simple but very effective usage of weathering solution consists of Panel liner and Tamiya weathering master for postshading.

Overall conclusion

Very good kit of unusual Swedish fighter plane. When two knowledgeable manufacturers come together, we get kit, which catches the eye of every model builder. I would have just one complaint to Eduard, camouflage schemes are tech documentation and not a work of art so I would dismiss the hints of weathering in it. It´s confusing and unnecessary. I would like to really recommend the kit as the building process was a pure joy for me.

© Text and Pictures Jirka Kuchynka