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Saab Draken J-35Ö |
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built by Alexander Wlachos (1:48) |
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Towards the end of the 1980ies the Austrian Saab Draken J-35Ö were obtained second hand, when 24 Swedish J-35D where completely overhauled and modified on customer request. The Draken was planned for a 10 years period of use, which had been extended to almost 20 years, until it has been discharged as unfit by the end of 2005 from it’s last country of operation.
The model is displayed in a special paintwork, which has been introduced 1997 on the occasions of the 1000 years jubilee of Austrias first written mention and the 20. anniversary of the air surveillance squadron. The Ostarrichi 996 lettering is conform to the one used on the original certificate.
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 The model
Thanks to Hasegawa the Draken has been released in 1/48 recently, which enables us to build this very attractive aircraft in very good quality. The kit is offering, typically for Hasegawa, wonderfully resembled surface details, but the overall fitting as not that perfect, so a bit of sanding is required in certain areas. But all is within an acceptable tolerance. Details of the cockpit and landing gear bay are kept rather simple, but the running gear itself is well done. So I have chosen my favorite producer of detail sets, Aires, and used their cockpit, landing gear bays and tail pipe. Additionally I added a few parts from the Eduard photo etched parts set. In my opinion the Aires stuff is the best around and the fitting is normally excellent, but in this case the plastic of the kit had to be thinned a lot to snuggle against the Aires parts.
Painting
Gunze gloss white has been used as primer and after masking I added a layer of Gunze gloss red. Landing gear bays and cockpit received a layer of Gunze Mr. Metal Color aluminium. The glossy paint serves as perfect base for applying the decals supplied in the kit, which can be used without any diluent. The nitpicker may have noticed that it is not possible to apply the Ostarrichi emblem 100% according to the original, but if the location of the joints are not used as a reference, nobody would recognize it. As the aircraft carried this painting for a few years, it is possible to display it with a gentle weathering. In this case thinned, dark brown oil paint has been applied to the joints and immediately removed with a cloth in direction of the airstream. As a glossy finish is more difficult to resemble than a matt one, it was a delight to notice that the original paint job was matt, a rare thing amongst special paintwork. A layer of Gunze matt finished the works. |
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Conclusion
An excellent, easy to built great kit, which turns into a top model by adding a few detail sets and on top of it the construction is not time consuming at all. |
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meet the modeler |
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Alexander Wlachos |
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I was born 1970 in Graz and I am living in Vienna since 1975. I have a graduate in biochemistry and I am working as a scientific-technological employee in a pharmaceutical company.
My interest in modeling started when I was a kid. I started mainly with aircrafts, sailing boats and occasionally cars in different scales. During school I built military kits in 1/35. Towards the end of my academic studies I specialized in 1/48 aircraft of all eras. As my skills are constantly improving, and sometimes I am not so happy anymore with elder models of mine, I start to rework them, which consumes the rare time available on the one hand and also does not help to reduce my constantly growing heap of unbuilt kits (currently about 70) on the other hand. A vicious circle, as constantly raising standards are resulting in an even longer construction period … |
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Email:  aircraftmodeler@aon.at |
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Web: Aircraft Modeler 1/48 |
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This page: GALLERY: Saab Draken J-35Ö (1:48) built byAlexander Wlachos
was last modified on: Sep 15, 2009
The URL of the page is: http://www.rlm.at/cont/gal11_e.htm
Translation into English by Werner
Kampfhofer
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