Marivox 1/72 Sk60B

[Parrahs]

With a solid chunk of my builds being Swedish stuff I guess I may as well jump in here. I had planned ot finish another build first, but that's stalled by a misprinted decal sheet so off to the stash I go.

 

The victim this time will be Marivox's 1/72 SAAB 105, or Sk60 as the Swedish air force called it. It came in a few different version used for training/recon/liason/light attack. With the "proper" attack secions of the Swedish air force being known as the supreme commander's club, Sk60 would at times be known as the SC's flyswatter. Apart from Sweden it also found a home in Austria.

 

 

The kit is one of those small scale business deals with rather more hearth than moulding brilliance. It seems we have the parts here for six different versions (demonstrator, A to D and Ö). Orignally it appears the the box came with decals for five different schemes, later on

 another three schemes and some PE has been added. Funnily enough it seems none of the marking schemes cover the A and D versions. All in all quite generous I'd say.

 

They're also quite generous with the flash.

 

 

From what I've read, this kit is "a tough opponent", which won't let you have any progress without a fight. So filler and plaster and concrete and chainsaw at the ready.

 

 

Going by what I remember of the decals form previous Marivox kits I've built that "Printed by Techmod" on the decal sheet is a very welcome sight.

The plan at the moment is for a Sk60B from F21 Kallax with all the ordnance I can fit under the wings, we'll see if I go for winter camo or not.

[reini]

Was not expecting to see another one of these, cool!  It seems you have a later boxing with more decals and PE. But I have little bit less of flash

 

Interested to see how you will progress with the kit, it really is a handful

[JosephLalor]

52 minutes ago, reini said:

Interested to see how you will progress with the kit, it really is a handful

That's stopped me from building mine so I'm hoping that this thread will inspire me to give it a lash.  I might go for what looks like the photo recce version.

Edited February 7, 2020 by JosephLalor

[exdraken]

great!

me too got 2 of these from Hannants today.. and one set of full of aftermarket as well....

most likely not for this GB though...

 

going to watch this space!

[Parrahs]

2 hours ago, reini said:

It seems you have a later boxing with more decals and PE. But I have little bit less of flash

It wouldn't surprise me if I got an equal mass of both.

 

1 hour ago, JosephLalor said:

I might go for what looks like the photo recce version.

That sounds like the long-snouted Sk60C. For further inspiration here's the SKA 29 panorama camera it had in there.

 

[trickyrich]

welcome along with another of these wonderful aircraft.

 

I really like these aircraft and am hoping the 1/48th version will finally be released so....ish.

 

It looks very much like your typical lower production run model, moulding not the best, but boy they make up for it with all the bits for all the versions!!

 

Good luck with her, will be watching with interest, and looking forward to seeing her in the gallery at the end.

[Col.]

There looks to be plenty spare plastic included with this kit and I'm not talking about all the optional parts.

[Parrahs]

So I started tinkering away. One of the first things I noticed is that the sprue gates tend to be a bit, hm...

 

 

I guess we could call them sturdy. The sprues are also generally very cramped, leaving little room for clippers to get in there. I foresee a lot of sawing in my future. On the sides of it are the control sticks, which for some reason are flat on one side and have details on the other. Glue the flat sides together and you'd get one fully 3D stick.

 

The PE is pretty well formed, but lacks numbers on the fret. Instead there's a map on the separate PE instructions sheet, where you can see basically nothing due to the poor quality black-and-white print. What you can make out however is that this map is for a completely different fret layout than the one you get with the kit. At least it appears to be the same parts... The rest isn't quite so black on black, but still leaves a bit to be desired.

 

 

I have no idea what the thing in the lower left is. I have only the vaguest idea of where it's supposed to go (if it's A against A then no one will ever see it without the aid of equipment meant for keyhole surgery). And the assembly doesn't appear possible if you only have three spatial dimensions to play with (perhaps it's the hyperdrive). Also note the straight sloping part on the centre console.

 

 

 

I got the seats together and in place though, as well as the centre console PE using the time-honoured tradition of "more glue". A quick spray later:

 

 

The belts weren't terribly co-operative. The headrests are built up of a PE frame, which probably isn't meant to go together anything like I made them, and then you slice off the cushion form the plastic headrest and stick in there. Said plastic part looks nothing like in the PE instructions and has no suitable cushion to slice off, so those bits were crudely fashioned from plasticard. the seats are also staggered a bit since the "ears" overlap pretty much completely. Now then, time to see if the fuselage will close up around this.

 

 

Not without a fight it won't. On the other side of things it also became quite obvious that the "ears" on the outside of the seats don't have any hope whatsoever of fitting within the canopy. So the question there is if I rip off the headrest and move those inwards a bit (doesn't look at all like that's how it's supposed to be in the instructions), just remove the PE and go back to the plastic parts, or I guess remove the outer ears and pretend nothing happened. I don't think I'll pick the last one.

[trickyrich]

least you don't have to worry about bits coming off the sprue during shipping......though they look like they'd survive a nuclear blast and still stay on! 

 

gosh those instructions are very confusing!!! I may or may not have worked out what A. it may be the floor where the peddles go.....but there again I'm probably totally wrong!

 

gee that almost looks like you're trying to fit an Aires AM cockpit into her! 

 

All that aside it, good to see this is under way.

 

[exdraken]

Nuce progress!

Maybe my build from years ago us of sone help:.

Depending on how photobucket shows photos for you I guess

let me know if you need advice!

 

 

[Christer A]

Marivox recon Sk60 and splinter scheme?

Someone wants to live deangerously!

 

Solid start in the kit I must say.

[Parrahs]

3 hours ago, Christer A said:

Marivox recon Sk60 and splinter scheme?

That was just possible inspiration for Jospeh, I'm doing a B in the older two-tone camo.

[Christer A]

6 hours ago, Parrahs said:

That was just possible inspiration for Jospeh, I'm doing a B in the older two-tone camo.

I'll do my best to hide my disappointment 😉

 

But the Draken colors are mighty fine too!

[Parrahs]

Plodding along. The fuselage offers the possibility to have all the attachment tabs you want, wherever you wan them.

 

 

In that you'll be adding them yourself. Getting the cockpit floor to fit in took a good deal of abrasion and sharp edges directed both at it and bits of the side wall detail. Once that was taken care of though the fuselage halves mated up surprisingly well. The entire seam needed some filler of course, but thanks to the utter lack of surface detail smearing that on and then sanding it off again was quick and easy.

 

 

The touches of black paint there are due to the design of the intakes.

 

 

I'm guessing that simply having an empty hole into the fuselage here will be less noticeable than a solid wall, so said wall is about to meet my mini saw and the black is then to make stuff inside even less noticeable.

 

I've also started to look into the armaments. Available options here are smaller rockets (two pair pylon), larger rockets (very Sidewindery in appearance) and 30mm gun pods. I've seen at leats one photo of a mixed gun pod and small rockets load out, which did look very nice. Probably a photo op/air show load though, as nothing I could find suggested that the aircraft ever went into the air with pods and something else. (And even them it may have taken a spirited fart at the right time to get off the runway.) My mind made up I started to look around for the rocket fins on the sprue and, well...

 

 

That's a.. peculiar way of doing it. Thankfully there's fins on the PE sheet as well. Of course, that means gluing tiny PE bits edge-on to a rounded piece of plastic. Unsurprisingly that quickly devolved into an exercise in sulphuric expressions. Four fins per rocket, two rockets per pylon, four pylons... I don't think this will end up all that well. So I went back to pondering. And to aid me a bit I took what I had, cut loose some big rockets,a nd assembled the gun pods.

 

 

Pods went together kinda ok, but the sprue attachment points were at the rear and the front. So now they have bits of stretched sprue for barrels.

Anyway, swapping out the small rockets for the big ones, or going for an all big rockets load-out was considered. But I just can't seem to find any photos whatsoever of these larger anti-tank rockets so, nah. As it is I'll probably just go for pods and nothing else, which is to have been what the air force also ended up preferring.

[PeterB]

Sounds like a lot of hard work - good progress though. Should be worth it in the end.

 

Pete

[Hewy]

Looks like your on the winning side of this battle 👍

[Bengalensis]

Looks like a good challenge right there, but it's taking good shape indeed.

[exdraken]

Do not use the Sidewinder missiles... not sure if ever carried, and they do not look the part anyways

 

[Parrahs]

1 hour ago, PeterB said:

Should be worth it in the end.

I do pretty much straight up need an Sk60 in the cabinet, so this is well within reasonable for making that happen.

 

35 minutes ago, exdraken said:

Do not use the Sidewinder missiles...

They're supposed to be anti-tank rockets that just happen to look a lot like sidewinders, but yes, not finding any photos despite searching high and low (so very, very low it turned out)  both online and in a book makes me somewhat suspicious about the design. As for the sidewinder itself I think that was to have been an option for the 105XT variant, but no one ever bought that one. The only missile the Swedish Air Force appears to have considered putting on the Sk60 was the Rb15, but that proved to be a bit much to be really feasible.

 

Btw, does anyone know if this thing needs some weight in the nose? There's plenty of room for it at least.

[exdraken]

30 minutes ago, Parrahs said:

I do pretty much straight up need an Sk60 in the cabinet, so this is well within reasonable for making that happen.

 

They're supposed to be anti-tank rockets that just happen to look a lot like sidewinders, but yes, not finding any photos despite searching high and low (so very, very low it turned out)  both online and in a book makes me somewhat suspicious about the design. As for the sidewinder itself I think that was to have been an option for the 105XT variant, but no one ever bought that one. The only missile the Swedish Air Force appears to have considered putting on the Sk60 was the Rb15, but that proved to be a bit much to be really feasible.

 

Btw, does anyone know if this thing needs some weight in the nose? There's plenty of room for it at least.

those ate the 6 parts number 75, no? 

I would clearly say Aim-9B Sidewinders.. also the PE parts look very much (and much more than the plastic) like Sidewinder fins....

 

the XT was actually more or less the Austrian Saab 105Oe.... strong J85 engine being the main difference..

 

http://craymond.no-ip.info/awk/avsa1055.gif

http://www.super-mystere.net/ci024/planche/images/full/ci08.jpg

whatever it says in the link... it is a Saab 105

 

http://img1.pictaero.com/2019/04/15/s/298998.jpg

 

if you want heavy armament, use the cannon pods... below an Austrian Oe in air-defence configuration

https://www.gotech.at/saab_105oe_rf-26(c)michael_jalowetz_07.jpg

 

 

cheers!

Edited February 14, 2020 by exdraken

[Orso]

I have been looking through the book about the plane and for a service machine rockets or gun pod seems to be the options.

On a prototype/test plane missiles is also an option.

[trickyrich]

you're coming along nicely with this one as well.

 

That is a very interesting way of doing the rocket fins!!!!

 

I love that scheme on the Austrian bird!!! 

[Col.]

Ouch! This kit is certainly making you work for it

 

12 hours ago, exdraken said:

 

Talk about FBMs - those are almost as big as the aeroplane!

[Parrahs]

Work has been progressing quite steadily. A bit too steadily perhaps, as I forgot to take any more pictures before the "bulk" assembly was done.

 

 

A bit of filler here, a bit of filler there, quite a decent amount around the intakes. Said intakes were also the only bits needing any major attention to make them fit prop... as well as they could. The whole thing was taken step by step so I'd have as good access as possible to sand things down, with the intakes being the last step. Overall surprisingly fast work, as the continued absence of almost all surface details means you can go at it with impunity a lot of the time. Waiting for the filler to set was usually the biggest obstacle.

 

The fiddliness prize here goes to the engines though, Reini's build thread will give you a decent look at things, but by and large once the "roof" is on over the mid fuselage you get a rear-facing rectangular hole on each side to insert truncated-cone engine tubes into. Some carving away at the lip of the roof is needed to make room for them. They then have no guides whatsoever rally as for where they go into the fuselage, so I just rested the rear end onto the very edge the bits they seem meant to rest against (I should probably have put them a few mm further back though) before simply shoving the front end as far to the outside of the fuselage as possible. With the only visible part begin the very rearmost end alignment exact of the front end should be of relatively minor importance. The top and bottom covers that, well, cover the engine tube and hide all the misery could then be attached with some minimal sanding.

 

All that done I noticed that there were a pair of parts that were supposed to be glued onto the tubes, and that the top cover would then rest on. Oh well, as the would never be seen I guess they're just there to help get things in palace (despite having no marked place to sit on the tubes), and I managed anyway.

 

 

Slightly modded seats put in place. They really should lean away form each other to avoid traffic jams if both pilots decide to be elsewhere in a hurry, but the canopy had other ideas even after I did some chopping here and there. Just like Reini I also noticed that the clear parts for the small windows on the sides weren't really resembling the shape of the opening all that much. They were also maybe not entirely to scale when it came to thickness either (~80mm) and had some serious sink holes. My solution was to just dump the clear parts and use Micro Krystal Klear instead. This also saves me masking it, I'll just tear them out after painting and make new ones.

 

With the canopy and wind-shield being less than clear I though I'd polish them up a bit. The canopy is no worse off than before, but I did manage to crack the wind-shield, which then turned to milk when I tried to glue it back together. Marivox customer support is on the case.

 

Then a final bit of major fiddliness with the main gear doors.

 

 

Quite a contrast when compared to the gear wells, as these contain no hints of details or even (it seems to me) the rough shape of the real thing.

[Col.]

Your Sk60 is taking shape nicely but looks to have taken a lot of filler and work to get there.