Pilot Replicas 1/48 SAAB J29F Tunnan

[JonMW]

So this is going to my first of hopefully two builds in this SIG. It's the fairly new Pilot Replicas SAAB J29F Tunnan (or flying barrel) in 1/48 scale. The kit looks great and the people that have build it say the fit is great. For now I only have a couple of AIM-9B, I will probably add something more, it really need the drop tanks to begin with. I made a review of the kit when I first got it http://intscalemodeller.com/viewtopic.php?f=352&t=15951.









I want to get my Russian GB SU-9 before I really get started with this so it's going to be a couple of days before I get going.

[TommyKillander]

That will be a great entry to this SiG, good luck with the build !


Tommy

[HIghAltitudeScale]

Nice kit, Ill be interested in watching this. Ive never built a Pilot kit

[Avgas]

Nice kit, Ill be interested in watching this. Ive never built a Pilot kit

Me neither

[patrickroos]

[JonMW]

Picked up a couple of extra parts, pitot tubes, drop tanks and a dude. Now I think I have everything I need for this build.

[JonMW]

Finally made some progress on this. Have started painting the cockpit, except for the decals on the back and side wall it's straight out of the box. There is still a couple of small things I like to add before I hide it all in the fuselage, but it builds really well with good details and perfect fit.

[pourquoi61]

SAAB built some beautiful aero planes, I looking forward to seeing this model on the tarmac.

[JonMW]

Have done a little bit more work on this. First thing to do is a leather pocket that is located by the pilots left knee. So I cut some pieces of masking tape.



Put it together.



Painted it and attached it on the left side of the cockpit. When it's all assembled it's pretty hard to see.





Next up was the exhaust, the kit parts are done in two halfs and there is a big nice ejector pin mark in each part. And putting them together there is two big seams that will need filling.





So instead I cut off the back wall and cut a strip of thin plastic sheet.





The strip was cut to length to fit inside the exhaust, this way it covers both the EPMs and the two big seams and now there is only one really small seam.



After sanding the seam I glued it to a sheet and cut it out. I still need to find some scrap PE to put inside it to add some details.



Have also managed to glue most of the fuselage together, the fit is awesome! This thing won't need much filler or rescribing.

[TomasGould]

Great choise of kit!!
I bought this kit planing to join this SIG when I relized it started 1 of april and not 1 of may that I thought.... Hahaha lol
So I will skip this SIG but I will follow your build of the coolest thin Sweden ever made
It looks really good so far!! Keep it up

[Stokesy44]

Great choise of kit!!
I bought this kit planing to join this SIG when I relized it started 1 of april and not 1 of may that I thought.... Hahaha lol
So I will skip this SIG but I will follow your build of the coolest thin Sweden ever made
It looks really good so far!! Keep it up

Even cooler than the blonde one from Abba?

[Stokesy44]

Looking good Sir. That instrument panel looks great.

[pourquoi61]

Fantastic build so far,God I love that aircraft.

[JonMW]

Thanks guys.

I've added the wins and then sprayed the seams with primer to check if it needed filler.



After the minimal amount of filler that was needed was sanded I primered the whole plane in Stynylrez. Now it's just waiting for metal colors.

[JonMW]

Finally some progress on this. I started with painting some of the panels in Vallejo Dark Aluminium, these where masked off and some other where painted in AK Duraluminium and masked and the rest painted in Vallejo Aluminium. After the masking where removed I dusted some Vallejo Aluminium over the whole model to tone done the difference between the panels. Then it was given a couple of thin coats of Tamiya X22 followed by a misting of MR Hobby Leveling thinner.





And all the decals where applied. The decals are printed by Cartograf, but they don't feel like the normal Cartograf decals. At first they don't seem to react at all to setting solutions. I applied them, brushed on the Micro Sol and nothing happened for three or four hours. So I went to bed and thought I would deal with them in the morning, but then they where perfect. So it just took a really long time.

[JonMW]

After the decals I applied a second coat of clear followed by Ultimate Dark Dirt and a coat of flat clear as the Swedish NMF jets where fairly dull and not polished. Then the landing gear was build, I stole the wheels from a Hobby Boss Tunnan as they are surprisingly better then the Pilot Replicas ones, frankly it's probably the only part the Hobby Boss got right in that kit. There is still a little bit of weathering left and then I plan to do a small base with one of Pilot Replicas beautiful resin pilot figures.


Sitting next to its slightly smaller Hobby Boss sibling.

[TommyKillander]

Great stuff!

It looks absolutely amazing!


Tommy

[Lysus]

Wow, that orange! Slick jet and a great looking paint job.

[Les]

How are your builds going along? Any progress on either one? We have less than 12 days left until the end of this SiG!

[JonMW]

Ok, so I'm officially stupid! I've spend the last couple of evenings building and painting the pilot figure for this build. The plane has been sitting on the shelf and I haven't had any other 1/48 scale project on the bench either wile doing this. The figure felt a little bit big but I didn't think too much about it as I was sure Pilot Replicas did a good job on the figure. Now with a lot of it painted, just missing last details and a bit of shading, I put it next to my Draken and realized that he is waaaay too big. In 1/48 scale he would be about 2.9 m tall. So after looking at the picture earlier in the thread of the packaging it does say 32-P-009, which is the product number of the 1/32 pilot. So I just build and painted a 1/32 scale dude for my 1/48 scale plane So I need to get a new figure and redo the painting, at least I wasn't overly happy with the paint job anyway.

[JonMW]

Have started working on the base, the plan is to do something that could be a corner of F15 Söderhamn where this plane was stationed. I've used this Google maps image as reference https://www.google.se/maps/@61.2695512, ... a=!3m1!1e3. Started with a A4 picture frame and two 1 mm sheets of plastic.



Cut one of the sheets in 5x5 cm squares and glued them to the other sheet leaving small gaps between the squares.







Next I applied a thin layer of DAS to the grass area.





A quick mock up to see what it will look like using my giant of a pilot.



Then I got onto painting, starting with Ultimate black primer, added a dark grey between the slabs. I then applied some white to make a line, this was then masked using Tamiya 2 mm tape for curves. I should have done this before the grey so a painted the white over spray with black and then redid the grey. Next up was to mottle a lighter grey over the whole surface, this was followed be a dark sand color in the joints. Dusted a light grey brown over the whole surface and then a light grey. I did a couple of tire marks using a dark grey, this was then toned down using the light grey. The centers of the slabs where then lightened using a very thin coat of white. Finally I added a little bit of a light sand color in a random pattern.



















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Next I did the grass area in three shades of brown starting with the darkest and going lighter. Might add a bit of green as well so I don't need a perfect cover of the grass.









As it stands now, still need to add pigments, oils, washes and the grass. And off coarse still need to get a smaller pilot.

[JonMW]

Went down to the shop and got another figure, this time in the correct scale. I can't believe I didn't see the difference earlier, the size difference is pretty big.

[Lysus]

Heh, I guess that means you'll need to find a 1/32 jet now

[JonMW]

Heh, I guess that means you'll need to find a 1/32 jet now

We where talking about that when I was at the hobby shop yesterday, they thought I should scratch build a 1/32 Tunnan. Not sure I'm up for that yet but it would be a fun project.

Managed to get the rest of the stuff finished today, first was to put the last touches on the base. Started with adding pigments to the grass area, as it's in summer and the grass isn't really well kept, I want to have a little bit of dirt showing through. I also put a little bit if grass in the joints between the concrete slabs.



When the pigments where dried I applied a little bit of PVA and sprinkled the grass. I then blew on it from one direction to get rid of the extra and also get some of it to stand up and not look too flat. I also applied some Ultimate concrete wash to some of the slabs to add a bit more variation.



Finally put it in a picture frame and added a couple of oil pools/drops using MIG Engine oil, oil paint.



The new pilot has been painted starting with Ultimate black primer. The overall was airbrushed applying most of the paint from above to leave some of the black on the bottom of the creases showing through to add some shadows. The rest of the colors where just brush painted and then a slightly lighter version dry brushed to add a little bit of a highlight. Lastly I added a dark brown oil wash. Now I just need to take some reveal pictures of both this and the Draken.

[NorthernModeller]

I love this. I really do. I am going to have to build one of those bases soon. It really looks nice

[JonMW]

Thanks, really appreciate it! The base is pretty easy to do, took less then a day and I probably used way more colors then is needed, but you can see a lot of the color variations so I like it.

Reveal thread is now up here http://intscalemodeller.com/viewtopic.php?f=488&t=18620