Twobobs

1/72 J35F1/J Swedish Drakens

Sheet Number: 72-082

Reviewed by  Jim Pearsall, IPMS# 2209

MSRP: $12.00 Website: www.twobobs.net The Aircraft There’s nothing better than an air show or aircraft retirement to bring out colorful paint jobs on aircraft. Special times call for special schemes, and the Svenske Flygvapnet had their share of colorful Drakens. 2Bobs gives you info and decals to do 2 models, with 4 different aircraft possible. Well, different may not be a strong enough word. The all-yellow and all-red aircraft are certainly eye-catching, and they’ve got to be fairly easy to paint. According to the instructions, the red one was painted with a roller. Somehow that’s just wrong. We spend multi-dollars on spray equipment and many years getting airbrush experience, and they paint the airplane with a ROLLER!!!. Anyway, you get enough stencils to do two of the four aircraft noted in the instructions, and I decided that the two aircraft with vestiges of camouflage would be built for the review. We built two Airfix Drakens. Yes, 2Bobs recommends the Hasegawa or Revell kits, but sometimes you build what’s in the stash instead of going to the LHS and buying two nicer, newer kits. It’s quieter at home that way, as we’re not cutting into SWMBO’s* grocery money. The painting instructions for the Drakens were very good, with FS numbers and references to Testors, Humbrol, Gunze Sanyo, and Xtracolor paints. I also made use of the really great upper surface drawings to make stencils for the camouflage schemes for the two aircraft. Scan, resize, print, and cut out tape to match. It was a lot easier, if not faster, than trying to follow those demarcations with Tamiya tape. The DECALS Bob Sanchez is VERY good at the layout of his decal sheets. I cut the sheet apart so that I had a small sheet of decals for the "red-tailed ghost" Draken, and one for the "camo-swordfish" plane. Then I cut a set of stencils off the sheet for each aircraft. This left the markings for "Johan Yellow" and "Petter Red" together, so they can be put away safely to be used when I get over the "roller" thing. I started out with the large swordfish decals, top and bottom. I also put on the yellow for the 2-part decals for the air brakes on the rear fuselage. The directions are most comprehensive, and I wish I had seen the part about "No speed brake decal before I put the second one in the water. Many of the maintenance markings are 2 part. This means that the decals will take at least 2 sessions, at least 12 hours apart, to allow the bottom decal to firmly set before trying to put something on top of it. Having the black surrounds on the crowns on the national markings is a nice touch, but I found it challenging to get them aligned. It seemed that just when I had it aligned left/right and front/rear, I would manage to somehow twist the crowns and it would be off clockwise or counter-clockwise. Perhaps they’ll have a seminar on decal application at the next IPMS Nationals. If so, I need to be there...in the front row. The only problem with the decals, rather than the installer, was that there were two tiny decals missing from the "red ghost". These were the "TRAMPE EJ HAR" (No Step) markings for the top of the intakes. These markings are quite prominent, and if they had been somewhere on the bottom or tail of the aircraft, they could have been ignored. Murphy’s Law, Corollary for Errors, was in complete control here. Fortunately the decal was also on "Petter Red", and I was able to scan and print a new pair of markings. OVERALL ASSESSMENT Recommended. If you’re looking for an interesting Draken with some background, here’s the decal sheet for you. Additionally the color and marking research is outstanding, and the decals work very well. They’re not simple to apply, and if you’re a little shaky with aligning decals, this sheet could be stressful. But the result is certainly worth the extra work. Thanks to Twobobs for providing the decal sheet and IPMS/USA for the motivation to build that old pair of older kits that have been hiding in my stash for years. *SWMBO = She Who Must Be Obeyed.