1/72 Hasegawa RF-35 Draken

Gallery Article by drakendk on Sept 6 2011

 

Here is another 1/72 Draken from my hand. This time it is the Danish recce/fighter bomber version. 

I used the Hasegawa kit as the basic kit and then went on with the detailing and conversion, and there is a lot to do. But my good friend Jakob Stoppel from Stoppel Hobby helped me out. He provided me with all the parts needed for this conversion as well as the decals, and it is by far the most extensive build I have ever done.

Here is a list of aftermarket goodies that I used: Aires wheel bays, exhaust and cockpit. Maestro Models Danish Draken conversion kit, ladder and fuel tanks. Eduard PE. IPMS Austria detail set. Stoppel Decals and some scratch building. 

The cockpit is a mix of Aires, Eduard and Maestro Models. The tail section a mix of IPMS Austria and Maestro Models. The rest of the aftermarket goodies went on straight from the boxes.

I scratch built the FOD covers from allu foil, stretched sprue, plastic sheet and Tamiya tape and made the RBF tags from paper and a red permanent marker.

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I am a brush painter, and that can be a challenge sometimes. To avoid brush marks, I lightly sanded between each coat of paint. Paint used was Xtracrylics mixed with flow improver and Future. The color is olive drab ana613 mixed with 20% white. Weathering was done lightly as the newer Danish Drakens looked quite clean, just a wash and  tiny amounts of pastels. Decals from www.stoppel.dk who makes decals for all Danish military aircraft.

I worked on this kit on and off for about two years and it was some kind of a challenge to me as I'm usually not into this amount of detailing. I mean, it's almost all aftermarket goodies with a little basic kit holding it together:-), but I'm quite happy with the result.
I have the big 1/48 RF-35 Draken from Hasegawa waiting in line, so maybe it will appear on this site in a few years:-)
 
Happy moddeling.

drakendk

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Photos and text © by drakendk