Jetmads 1/32 JA-37

[Parrahs]

So with nothing much happening scale modelling wise for me in December, what was started over in

will now have to do the shuffle of deferred success over to this board instead.

 

Anyway, things have happened. First of all the missiles were finished.

 

On to cockpit and front wheel well.

I had some issues with the harness fit, resulting in some repairs being needed but the rest fit well enough here.

 

Painted and installed. Some more fit issues here, resulting in a bit more harness damage as I put the seat in. The side seat rail supports were a bugger and a half too, too long and with little guidance of where the heck they were supposed to go on the fuselage side.

 

The nose wheel bay fit perfectly on the other hand. The photography really highlights the 3D layering structure something fierce here. Nosecone's dry fitted here, a bit too wide all around. I took care of that by sanding it down a bit from the rear.

 

Then I went off to do some major structural work, like opening up the holes for the wing tabs and main gear well.

One side, everything's kinda ok here. Note the rather sharp lower edge to the big hole.

 

The other side...

...required a bit more clean-up.

 

Proctology and the RAT.

I'll probably re-paint the bits outside of the exhaust in a less toasty metal colour.

 

Front plumbing done.

Some peculiar printing errors in the upper support piece, but nothing that'll affect anything.

 

That done I could then join the main bits together.

Jetmads shipping department must be frighteningly good at Tetris, given that the aircraft will end up longe,r wider and taller than the box they squeezed the kit into.

As for the assembly the main mid-fuselage joint has some pretty gnarly shape mismatch between the front and rear piece, some of it puttied and sanded down here, other bits just somewhat sanded back due to there being detailing around that would get obliterated if things were made flush, that I wouldn't be able to recreate, and the absence of which would be a bigger issue than the joint being rather gnarly there. Or so I say, let's not give you any photographic evidence to the contrary... Wings needed a lot of grinding as well to improve their fit from horrendous to "well, I guess that's about as good as it'll get, plenty of filler and it should look ok from a distance". The wheel well inserts for the wings fit well enough though, and those for the fuselage weren't all that hard to get in place (though I still managed to put a decent sized crack into the fuselage trying to push things into place there, this is some brittle stuff.)

 

And to round things off here I also stuck on The Gun. (Oh, and the

Same 30x173mm as the GAU-8, and this on an aircraft only really intended to shoot at other aircraft. I wonder what the biggest gun put on a plane for anti-air work is, especially post-WW2?

[exdraken]

Oh, surprise!

Wow!

[Aigore]

Oooooh, fantastic work! That cockpit really looks nice and that main wing-fuselage joint looks absolutely amazing!

[Parrahs]

7 hours ago, Aigore said:

That cockpit really looks nice and that main wing-fuselage joint looks absolutely amazing!

A certain other build thread around here has provided an amount of second-hand references for it. Let's see if I ever grab the wrong pic to post here from the project folder...

[Parrahs]

Work continues with various little bits and bobs, like the missile rails.

Some cleanup needed.

 

I decided to go more for platonic ideal than diorama realism, and so the flaps and whatnot are built up instead of down. partially because the area underneath the air brakes had some of the detailing buried under casting flaws. Now here's a little tip: if you feel like there isn't enough filling and sanding to be done on this kit as it is, don't pay a terrible lot of attention to which parts for the rear rudder actuators are for the up position and which are for the down. Once you have the "down" parts glued on there basically won't be any way to get the extremely brittle 3D prints off again in one piece (assuming a suitably filling superglue that won't let a de-bonder sneak in to attack more than the tiniest fraction of the joint), so you'll just have to fill the massive gaps left instead.

At this point I'm starting to think of masking tape as a fill-and-sand accessory occasionally also useful for painting more than the other way around.

 

Anyway, bits and bobs. Here's the landing gear.

These are all three pieces each, two wheels and then everythign else. 3D printing getting its moment to shine.

 

So, here we are then.

One vortex generator decided to defect to the carpet monster, and that after being glued down! Traitorous little... Thus the decidedly pale plasticard replacement.

 

Only thing left before priming really is the c...

...rap. Mailing Jetmads customer support about buying a new one to replace the one I broke got a negative, they'll send one for free instead. And so nothing much will happen for a while as the various postal services do their thing. I think it was ten days for the kit itself so I guess that'll be what I set my expectations to.

 

[Aigore]

Aww man! That sux...but fortunately the Jet ads customer support is top notch!

 

Ah, the joy of filling and sanding... how I will NOT miss that!

You are beating it to submission! Keep up the good work!

[Parrahs]

 

There, good as new and veeery gently cut from the casting block.

 

With that, all's ready for primer. Given the size of it I went and bought a Mr Surfacer rattle can least my compressor melt a hole in the floor.

 

 

If the nose pitot tube look a bit off in size it's because when it was time to glue it on it wasn't on the 3D-prnted block. Which may be for the best, something that thin, made of such brittle material, and sticking out in front doesn't seem like it'd survive more than a few second (at least not around me). May as well go with something sturdier straight away, and the cold-drawn steel wire I replaced it with should be far more of a threat to its surroundings than the other way around.

 

 

I guess I wasn't done with the filler and sanding sticks quite yet.

 

That bit taken care of I slapped some paint onto the landing gear.

 

 

Panel lining/wash to follow after assembly. Now the marathon begins.

 

 

Taking off my mask afterwards I noticed that the Mr Paint and Mr Levelling thinner scents had stood no chance and were completely overpowered by the "toasty compressor" fragrance. Oh well, it hasn't started to sound all that painful quite yet, so it should make it to the end of this project at least. Afterwards... it's had a decent lifespan already, I think.

[Aigore]

Awesome! Happy your second windshield survived

You're making short work of this kit, Impressive! 

Yeah, 3D-printed pitottubes....seriously? I break them by just looking at them.

As I mentioned in my thread Maestro is working on brass dito!

[RicardoD]

Great job! Is this going to be a gray Viggen or the splinter scheme one?

[Parrahs]

13 hours ago, RicardoD said:

Great job! Is this going to be a gray Viggen or the splinter scheme one?

Grey, I already have a 1/72 SH-37 standing around in the splinter scheme.

[Parrahs]

Top mottled.

Done bit by bit over basically a week.

 

The the cover/lend coat.

Things are still decently not-even in a mostly desirable way, but obviously the camera won't  have any of that.

 

Belly mottled.

The thin, 3D-printed belly fin in between the air brakes there is the main reason the model gets to sit on top of the box and the foam insert here. Probably doesn't hurt the fin either of course.

 

Blending

Manhandling this huge chunk of resin around to get a good shot on every side of the ordnance rails and aileron/elevator/flap-actuators was a bugger and half.

 

Some paint on main gear wells and air brakes.

 

Most of the light grey was painted with the dark grey masked off. So at the end, along with some overall repair work, I went back and airbrushed over the demarcation line freehand to soften it. Then on with the landing gear and...

At long last it stands on its own.

[Anthony in NZ]

That's absolutely beautiful!!!

I love your painting method (I plan on doing my 32nd FG.1 like this too)  just beautiful

[Paramedic]

Phenomenal.

[Aigore]

Sweeet! Look at that! 

[RicardoD]

Great! All other ones I've seen elsewhere have the splinter scheme, this is the first gray one I'm aware of. Will look even great with the decals on, nice work!

[Parrahs]

Final stretch now.

 

Decals applied. After picking an overall grey scheme and white/grey live missiles instead of green blind ones I went for something with the big hi-wis peacetime markings to add some colour. Uppsala's just north of here as well so an F16 bird works nicely (even though most of my memories of these are due to F21).

 

Wash applied and (mostly( cleaned up. Picture angle picked to show just how small the box is compared to the finished product.

 

Protective varnish and the last few bits glued on. Now all that remains is to rip off the canopy mask, followed by either celebration or assorted sorrows in need of prompt drowning. Something useful for either was put on standby, chosen t suit a Swedish subject and British website. But as for where we end up after that, well, that's for another topic. Specifically:

 

And so the biggest modelling project since I built up Revell's Vasa a few years back. For some perspective on the time it took for this one, well, I easily got a 1/72 Corsair done start to finish while waiting for the replacement windshield.

[Aigore]

That's one pristine looking Viggen! 😍 wonderful in every way! Well done mate!

[RicardoD]

That's a lovely finish! The Viggen is a very beautiful plane, whatever scheme it carries. This is the first gray Jetmads Viggen I've seen and it is an absolutely pertfect model!!!