RichardL

I might be able to fix the step by filing down the ridge on the plastic to make the step look less severe. Will see what I can do later tonight.

Yes, there is a small "step" at the junction between the wing and fuselage. Unfortunately, this is a flaw with the plastic that can't really be fixed. The wing is too thin and sits too low, so you see the step. But it's not as bad when viewed in person. The grey primer and lighting show it more in the pictures. If you look up other 1/48 ESCI or Airfix Viggen models on the internet, you will see the same issue. I suppose one way to fix this during the build is to glue the top wing halves to the fuselage first and raise the top wings up to hide the step.

Fuselage weapon pylons mounted:

JA wingtip lights are done and glued on: When everything is painted, I will probably cut off the end of each light and glue on a clear dome lens.

Thanks Dave. I'm building and forming the wingtip lights out of styrene rods as we speak.

Getting closer to final priming: I still need to make the JA specific wingtip lights and attach the two fuselage weapon pylons before spraying the final primer coat.

Much better: Of course I will need to rescribe some of the panel lines and sand again to smooth out everything.

Still blending the windscreen to the fuselage. The left side turns out pretty good: The right side has a strange bump and low spot that will need fixing: Need to bring out the putty again

I am dead serious.

Thanks.

I will use Maestro cockpit detail set to save some time, although I feel it might take more time than expected. I will paint the cockpit next time. Do you have a picture showing the slight hump on the middle wing cord?

Mr. Black Surface Primer 1500 sprayed on to check for flaws, which I see a few. Need to pull out the putty to smooth and blend.

The windscreen is carefully cut out from Maestro corrected canopy using a pair of scissors designed for cutting Lexan. The downside to Maestro canopy is it's paper thin, so there is not much surface area for the glue to hold on to. I'm surprised it's sticking fairly well. Why can't they make the corrected canopy almost as thick as the original? I'm going to do some clean up and blend it into the fuselage.

Thanks. I just used a light coat of Gunze clear green on the sides to replicate glass. My first pass turned out to be too opaque, so I used rubbing alcohol to carefully remove some paint.

Did some clean up: It's not perfect, but hopefully the windshield will blur some of it.

Since the kit does not provide the round Radar Warning Receiver (RWR) in the rear fairing behind the tail fin, I decided to make my own by rounding the end of a piece of spare sprue: Cut it out: And installed: It still needs some final tweaking. Scratch building for the win

The HUD is now mounted: I see some ugliness in these pictures that I didn't see with my naked eyes. Will need to fix them.

Welcome to the show. The good part is not too far away. Primed with Tamiya grey primer, then sprayed with Patra acrylic anti-glare panel black:

I stared at the HUD supports for a while and decided they were too tall and didn't angle back enough, so I cut them out and trimmed them slightly to achieve a better angle:

I also shortened the stock HUD and rounded its top edge to make it resemble the real thing:

Today I cut the HUD frames/supports out of thin strips of styrene. The stock ones are not even close.

Thanks. Much better:

Panel lines at the base of the vertical fin rescribed: On the right side, the Dymo tape used for guiding the scriber lifted the resin primer in several spots, but no big deal: You can almost see the green putty at the rescribed lines. I'm several days away from spraying the final coat of primer. I like to install the front instrument panel, HUD, and windshield before then. This way, I can blend the base of the windshield to the top of the fuselage.

Squadron Green putty is used to smoothly blend the base of the vertical tail to the top of the aft fuselage. Unfortunately, the putty partially filled up the panel lines on the vertical tail, so they would need to be rescribed. Pics showing the vertical tail after a coat of Mr. Resin Primer has been applied: Note the filled panel lines at the base of the vertical tail.

The four vents are now glued to the top of the fuselage. The vents were a little thick, so I trimmed inside the opening to make them thinner. Had a heck of a time trying to position each piece into the correct position and applying glue since each is so small.