J 20 Swedish Air Force 1:48

[Rudolf_Filip]

One of my favourite aircraft of all time is the Reggiane Re.2000. It was a really good looking fighter and certainly was put to good use during the war here in Sweden.

I work at the local museum at former Swedish Air Force base F 10 Ängelholm. This wing was the only one equipped with the J 20 in the Swedish Air Force. 

It served between the years 1941-1945. 

Sweden was neutral but the south part of the country was not far from the action. 

Many damaged bombers and fighters from the fighting nations had to be escorted to save landings in Sweden. 

 

I've been working on and of  correcting the old Classic Airframes kit for several years now. I was just going to finish it when a brand new kit from Special Hobby arrived. I'm going to add the finishing touche to that kit as well in this thread. 🙂 

 

The Special Hobby kit is actually based on the old Classic Airframes kit. Not that shows all that much. I think it's mostly the wing sprue that is identical. 

 

Ok. Lets pick up the plastic parts! 

 

Really nice detail on the smaller parts. 

Cockpit looks great! 

The clear parts are thin and crystal clear. 

 

The decals looks usable, which is seldom the case when it comes to Swedish markings. 

 

I think that I might want to take it slow with these small parts in the cockpit. It looks great on paper though. 🙂 

 

Ooops! 

I see an embarring mistake here! 

Special Hobby have managed to mix up the main landing gears on their instructions! 🙂 

 

I'm going for a Swedish J 20, but maybe not one of those in the kit. We'll see... 

 

All in all it looks like a great kit. It should go together much easier than the old CA kit. 

Here is my Classic Airframes kit by the way. I've spent so much effort on that so I think that it will be finished along with the SH kit. 

 

I see a lot of rivets in my near future... 

[Rudolf_Filip]

I started building this morning. I'm amazed how far Special Hobby have come since I last worked on one of their kits. The cockpit is one of the best I have seen in a standard kit. No need for any etch or resin here! 

 

 

I started assemblying the many detailed parts that go behind the seat. There are a radio and a small tank. Very nice. 

However... 

When checking my references I discovered that the Swedish Air Force did put in an armoured plate behind the seat soon after delivery. 

 

Oh well... I guess that the nice detail wouldn't be seen anyway. 🙂 

 

I have rather decent references when building this kit. I have access to the Italian manual (in English since the Italians actually tried to sell the Re.2000 to RAF!). I also have the Swedish manual and a photoarchive full of nice images. 

We even have the tail section of a J 20 complete with original Italian early war paint. 

I have also taken a few pictures of the preserved J 20 at the Swedish Air Force museum. 

So I'm pretty well prepared for this build... 

 

 

 

[Christer A]

This is going to be E.P.I.C. Andreas, especially when looking at your old CA J20.

Will the little radiothingy make an appearance here?

 

[Antti_K]

Hello Rudolf-Filip,

 

it is always nice to see a Nordic subject here on BM; especially a rare one. Although it is endast för tjänstebruk I will be watching this😉

 

Cheers,

Antti

[Rudolf_Filip]

2 hours ago, Christer A said:

This is going to be E.P.I.C. Andreas, especially when looking at your old CA J20.

Will the little radiothingy make an appearance here?

 

Thanks Christer! 

Yes, there will definatly be a "little radiothingy" in this cockpit. 🙂 

 

You will be able to quit your regular job and make a living on those things soon enough... 😀 

[Rudolf_Filip]

Here is the "little radiothingy" that Christer is talking about. 

It's the control box for the radio that was used in Swedish fighters during WW2. 

It's a rather prominent detail in many cockpits so I wanted to add it to my builds. So I managed to get Christer to design and print those "radiothingys" for me... 

 

 

Result! 

No detail is too small!? 😀 

 

 

I've come a little further on my Reggiane cockpit. I decided to add the many rivets on the floor. I doubt that they ever will be seen again though...

 

 

It's time to start up the compressor and dust of the airbrush. Despite what Special Hobby tells me I think that I'm going to paint the interior in white aluminium with a black instrument panel. 

[Christer A]

8 hours ago, Rudolf_Filip said:

Thanks Christer! 

Yes, there will definatly be a "little radiothingy" in this cockpit. 🙂 

 

You will be able to quit your regular job and make a living on those things soon enough... 😀 

That will be quite a meagre living unless I convert to a free to use CAD software. One yearly license for Creo Parametrics is in the vicinity of 6000£ IIRC.

 

But you do have bunch of very nicelooking Special Hobby plastic cockpit parts! Just add a belt and some instrument decals 😃 

[Rudolf_Filip]

It's been a very busy day with only a little time for some modelling. 

I've started to paint the various parts of the cockpit. I decided to go for "White Aluminium" from MRP as the main interior colour. 

According to all knowledge and Special Hobbys instructions the interior should be in the Italian interior green. However the preserved J 20 is bare metal inside. 

All my many pictures, although in black and white, seem to show bare metal. 

So I went for a version of that shade... 

 

 

Well... It's a start... 

There are still a lot of parts to add in this "office". This is a fun kit. 

Hopefully I can get more done tomorrow. 

 

 

[Kampartiger]

I  am keeping in pace with your build as I hv just recently bought 4 boxes of the SH Falcao as I know nothing much about it. Btw in a correspondence with SH,there's a big possibility that the production team will come out with a Mavag Heja II conversion and a Reggiane 2001 in the future. 

[Rudolf_Filip]

Hello everybody! 

This build is not going as fast as I expected. I kind of started a group build on Facebook to help me with my motivation. We are now 17 of us building this kit at the same time. 

Undfortunatly, there are some real experts in this group. 

It turns out that everything I thought that I knew about the J 20 Re2000 was wrong... 😀 

 

In the end it is great fun and will probably result in an accurate build of the Swedish Air Force Re2000. 

 

Since most of the time have been spent on research there haven't been much building going on. 

Here is where I am at the moment. 

The cockpit is stunning when built straight from the kit. 

 

 

 

At this point in the build I've only added some rivets and instrument decals (Airscale). I've also manufactored an armoured plate (which is going to be hidden behind the seat) and a seat cushion (still needs to be painted). 

 

Before I close up this cockpit I have a lot of more details to add. I have raided my spare parts for some etched levers and soem wires. I also need to add my control box for the radio (the famous "radio thingy"). 

I need to find out more about how the seat belts looked like as well. 

 

Meanwhile I've started to think about the missing external detail. The Reggiane was absolutely covered in rivets. I think that my Rosie the riveter need to get work on this kit. 

 

 

I spent an hour thinning the front part of the fuselage from the inside to open up these slots. I hope that it will make a difference in the end... 🙂 

 

The wings on this kit are the only parts left from the Classic Airframes kit. They are not quite up to the modern standard when compare to the rest of the kit. 

Something must have happened with the molds here. The landing gear bay looks like it was molded in butter. 

 

 

 

I will have to drill that out. I've also ordered a Vector resin landing gear set from Russia. It's designed for the Italeri Re2002 but it might work for this one as well. 🤔 

I also ordered the Vector resin rudder set (also for Italeri Re2002). I know that it will fit because I used it on my Classic Airframes kit. 

 

When it comes to the wing parts they really are the weak part of this kit. 

I've already seen a finished build where the dihedral is much to great for a Re.2000. It should be almost completely flat. The lower wing part is seriously warped and need to be straightened out. 

I hope that some warm water will help. I might need to glue in some reinforcement. 

 

 

The most time have I spent researching the camouflage colours. The Italian camouflages are an absolute jungle! 

It will probably end up with me painting the thing in shades that looks alright more than being accurate... 

 

I've been playing around for hours with various different MRP paint bottles. I thought that it wouldn't be so hard since MRP have released many of the Italian colours. So I bought them all. 

Unfortunatly there are many of them and I can't figure out which ones to use. 

It also turns out that the original colours where of bad quality and had to be repainted. The Swedish Air Force then used what they had that was "close" to the shades. 

The result is that not two aircraft looked the same in the end. 🙂 

I have an old scrapped Italeri Re2000 in 1:72 to test the paint on. 

Since my H&S Evolution decided to give up I had to use my trusty old cheap Biltema airbrush. I just wanted to try out the correct combination of colours so please ignore the quality of my paint job... 

 

 

I think that I might go for the shades that I used on the starboard wing. They match the preserved paint on our tail section pretty good. 

 

 

Since I'm still in isolation with my family because of that virus I might as well spend some time on this kit and build it properly and as correct as I can. 

Hopefully I can get some more work done this afternoon. 🙂