and other artistic stuff
A while ago I recieved a news letter from my goto online hobby store, telling about this new 32nd scale Vampire kit with swedish decals included. So I decided to get one! 🙂
Have to take a look at the contents of this one later!
Mostly small parts left to sort, and I also wanna make sure I got everything on that’s not easily broken off (except the canards) glued on to the plane.
The diamond shaped pieces are the small lights at each side sitting slightly behind the intake. I checked pics and so far I can find there’s no diamond shape plate as they’re sitting directly on to the fuselage. So I cut away the excess and sanded them down a bit.
Then there’s a piece of glass to go to each of them. Will do that later when the plane is painted. Maybe the glass should be coloured too.
I glued fins to all the missiles, which on some wasn’t easy as Revell haven’t made the slightest mark on where they should go, making it harder to get both in the correct position and straight.
I also glued the pylons, two of each kind.
Both pylons seems to fit on any place under the wings, but I have to check which missile to use and where.
Here are the possible missiles to choose from.
Now I need to figure out which ones to use and how they should be painted. I think most of them are grey with differently coloured noses.
I first thought that the canopy should need to be fixed, but it turned out that it actually have a frame on the spine. Happy I didn’t have to!
I did a test fit of the canopy parts.
Then the canopy was masked.
I did a bit of dry brushing and glued the HUD.
Then the canopy and front glass was glued in place.
I’ve also worked some with the seams and done some re-scribing. I still haven’t decided how to do with the ribs on the canards. As far as I understand they should not be there. At least I haven’t seen any on any of the pics I’ve looked at.
I just wish I had checked earlier, as removing them now will be a lot harder, as I’m afraid to break the canards. Perhaps I can use my dremel and carefully take them down and sand the last bit. Once I decide to remove them, there’s no turning back!
I managed to straighten the wings or wing parts by dipping them in hot water and then bend them while hot. Not perfect, but after gluing the halves together it looked alright.
I then could glue them to the body, and the fit against the topside wa pretty nice.
The underside had a bit of a gap.
Actually not very much, and a bit of thin plastic and some putty will solve that. I will also need some putty on the topside, but overall I haven’t used very much on this kit, and once the wings are done, I’ll check all seams with primer to see if there is any problems or perhaps ghost seams.
I’ve checked an old post about a Gripen prototype build, and saw that Hu64 was recommended as the main colour on the body. I need to see if I can translate into some other colour brand, as for the moment Humbrol isn’t allowed to be sold within the EU.
This is an fairly old kit, depicting one of the prototype Gripen.
32nd scale and all would be all nice and dandy if it was at least somewhat correct, but the flaws are quite large as can be seen on this drawing, printed to scale, with the fuselage halves laid out on top.
As can be seen there’s quite a lot to correct. A large chunk of the plane is missing lenghtwise. Like about a meter on the real plane missing!
The wings are somewhat short both in lenght and width.
It would be quite a task to try and correct it, and with this kit I’m not going to try. I’m going to build it as it is. I think it’ll end up looking like a Gripen to the unknowing eye.
As usual it all starts with the cockpit.
I also started assembling the engine.
Wheel bays and intake parts was installed, and for some reason I assembled the radar. I don’t even know why they made parts for the radar as it won’t be seen at all. Pretty much the same goes for the engine.
The cockpit parts was first painted with a dark grey and then some areas got some black.
Then the side and front panel was painted light grey, and then seat and panels was detail painted.
All the parts to the possible loadout was assembled.
The cockpit got a gloss cote and a wash.
The instructions calls for 20 g nose weight, and a little more was glued in the nose after removing the radar parts I glued for some reason.
While the glue is drying, I started with the wings, just to discover that one was slightly warped.
At the moment not sure how to correct it. Perhaps it works with a hair dryer, or using hot water to bend it in position.
The engine was installed.
The cockpit was assembled and an ejection handle was made from copper thread and glued to the seat. The whole cockpit was glued in place and then the fuselage halves was joined.
As can be seen the intakes got some putty and the fin is assembled.
The fuselage went together very nicely and there will not be much to sort as this close up will show.
If only the measurements had been somewhat correct, this would have been a fairly nice kit that goes together very well.