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Finished, my Italeri 1/48 Saab AJ-37 Viggen. It was a rubbish kit, and the masking was a nightmare (and my paintwork could have been better), but it came out looking pretty decent. The "fields and meadows" camouflage is iconic. Bonus pic of my 35 or 40 year old Matchbox kit. I took the Viggen to the scale modellers' club on Saturday, and it got lots of attention and interest.
The Saab Viggen was a Cold War interceptor/fighter-bomber. The AJ-37 version I did is the fighter bomber, and it could carry a whole collection of rockets, fuel tanks, air to ground missiles, and air to air missiles, and more. The Viggen is the only aircraft ever to get a missile lock on the legendary SR-71 Blackbird
.
Full link to progress pics album here.
Alongside the 1/72 scale Matchbox Viggen I built probably in the late 80s. Back then I thought gloss varnish looked great, and of course it was rather amateurish. I had painted the camouflage by hand with a paintbrush, no masks.
The Saab Viggen was a Cold War interceptor/fighter-bomber. The AJ-37 version I did is the fighter bomber, and it could carry a whole collection of rockets, fuel tanks, air to ground missiles, and air to air missiles, and more. The Viggen is the only aircraft ever to get a missile lock on the legendary SR-71 Blackbird
.
The first colour I did was the light green. I printed templates I'd downloaded, marked every colour on the template with a number, then using a scalpel, used the template to cut masking tape laid on a cutting mat, and masked the green piece by piece. Then I used a clear coat (theoretically to help seal the masking tape, though it didn't work with the first tape I used), black base, tan, and then the next colour, brown. I repeated for the black green, and finally did the olive green.
When I pulled all the tape off, I found a lot of bleeding under the light green tape, so I carefully masked around the affected areas, and gently resprayed and blended those bit (and had to add a brown I missed, and a brown I'd done wrong). I did a bit of post-shading (first time I've done it!) to bring back some of what was lost by the respraying. Then gloss coat, decals, a bit of panel lines (most lines were raised, sadly), and a matt coat.
In retrospect, I would have started with the smallest colours first (brown and black green), and left the big areas of light green for last. I would also have used the good masking tape first, LOL.
Full link to progress pics album here.
Alongside the 1/72 scale Matchbox Viggen I built probably in the late 80s. Back then I thought gloss varnish looked great, and of course it was rather amateurish. I had painted the camouflage by hand with a paintbrush, no masks.