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Saab JAS 39 Gripen


bazzacourt

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I'm looking for help to decide which is best in 1/72 scale for a Gripen. Airfix, Revell, Italeri or other? Any help would be much appreciated, thanks. 

Edited by bazzacourt
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Are you looking to build a particular variant?  The choice of kit will mainly be driven by that decision.

 

Revell Germany first released a JAS-39 kit in the late 80s representing the early prototype.  I've never seen the plastic for this one but have read that it's not a good replica (Kit 4374, the box art shows a "kitchen sink" display of a full range of armament under the aircraft). To the best of my knowledge this tooling has never been reissued.

 

Italeri was next on the market and produced single-seater JAS-39A and two-seat JAS-38B kits.  These are "typical Italeri" in being generally accurate for the production aircraft but soft in some of the details.  The Italeri plastic has been reboxed by Bilek and Tamiya.

 

Revell's second Gripen kit (04611) is a modified version of Italeri's single-seater.  The basic airframe is the same, but Revell's boxing has a revised sprue layout with different armament (IIRC heavy air-to-air load of AIM-120s in place of Swedish ASMs).  I've not seen the Airfix kit but reportedly it's a reboxing of Revell's variant of the Italeri.

 

More recently Revell has issued new toolings of the upgraded JAS-39C and two-seat JAS-39D.  At least from an "in box" comparison standpoint these are a significant improvement over the earlier releases.

 

Note that Italeri has reissued their A/B kits with C/D decals but no tooling changes. I know the C/D has aerial refueling and upgraded landing gear, but I'm  not clear how easy it would be to backdate the Revell kits to an A/B or update Italeri for full accuracy.

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2 hours ago, Orso said:

 If you want to build a Czech,Thai, Hungarian or South African plane you need the newer JAS 39C or JAS 39D kit from Revell. For the early JAS 39A or JAS 39B kits I put this together:  https://www.ipmsstockholm.se/home/jas-39a-och-39b-gripen-byggsatser-i-172/

Bilek did release a resin? C/D conversion in the past, probably some boxes had it but good luck finding the right one especially if the seller keeps it for him and removes extra instruction parts, also Revell C/D got the wheels wrong, I think you can downgrade it to an A as Italeri needs to be rescribed

 

Luigi

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12 hours ago, Guy with a Beer said:

I picked up an JAS-39A Tamiya kit recently.  I couldn't tell you how good it is (or if it is just an Italeri rebox) as I haven't opened it yet, but that might be another option. 

 

23 hours ago, CT7567 said:

The Italeri plastic has been reboxed by Bilek and Tamiya.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I can't attest to a comparison with the other kits, but am currently building this kit from Revell (which I believe is their latest tool)

 

Picked up for about £10 which I think is entirely reasonable - fairly good fit for all of the parts, a bit of sanding to try and get a smooth finish but it wasn't too much of a pain. 

 

Not sure yet whether to go for the Tigersmeet job scheme (I haven't yet looked at the quality of the decals), but might well go for the simple Czech scheme (other one in the pack is Swedish) as it's an aircraft I saw at Fairford a few years ago. 

 

176227-11185-16-1080.jpg

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  • 3 weeks later...

Thank you for some really useful tips and information. I’m a big fan of the Saab jets, and plan on building several Gripen. I’ll definitely be bookmarking this page.

Thanks again😀

Edited by F1xena
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