The kit and its assembly:
Even though the model depicts a what-if aircraft, the Draken’s proposed “Gustav” attack variant based on the J 35 D interceptor was real – even though I could not find much detail information about it. So, I took some inspiration from the contemporary Danish Saab 35XD export version, which probably had similar features to the Gustav? Another inspiring factor was a pair of Rb 05 missiles (from an Airfix Viggen) that I had bought with a spare parts lot some time ago – and an attack Draken would be the perfect carrier for these exotic (and unsuccessful) missiles.
For a low-budget build I used one of Mistercraft’s many recent re-boxings of the vintage Revell Draken from 1957(!), and this kit is nothing for those who are faint at heart. It is horrible.
The kit probably depicts a late J 35 A (already with a long tail section), but even for this variant it lacks details like the air scoops for the afterburner or a proper landing gear. The Draken’s characteristic tail wheel is also missing completely. Worst pitfall: there is NO interior at all, not even a lumpy seat! The canopy, the early model with struts, is disturbingly clean and crisp, though. The overall fit is mediocre at best, too – there are only a few visible seams, but any of them calls for filling and PSR. It’s a very toyish kit, even though the general outlines are O.K.
And the Mistercraft instructions are really audacious: they show all the parts that are actually NOT there at all. Suddenly a seat appears in the cockpit, of the tail wheel… And the decal sheets (there are three, totally puzzled together!) only roughly meet the aircraft you see in the painting instructions, but that’s a common feature of most Mistercraft kits. How much can you taunt your customers?
So, this leaves lots of room for improvements, and calls for a lot of scratching and improvisation, too. First measure was to open both the air intakes (which end after 2mm in vertical walls) and the exhaust, which received an afterburner dummy deep inside to create depth. Next, I implanted a complete cockpit, consisting of s scratched dashboard (styrene sheet), the tub from an Italeri Bae Hawk trainer’s rear cockpit (which comes with neat side consoles and fits quite well) plus a shallow vintage ejection seat, probably left over from an early MiG from a KP kit or one of its many later reincarnations. As an alternative, there’s a Quickboost resin aftermarket set with a complete cockpit interior (even including side walls, IIRC intended to be used with the Hasegawa Draken) available but using it on this crappy kit would have been a waste of resources – it’s more expensive than the kit itself, and even with a fine cockpit the exterior would still remain crappy.
Since I could not find any detail about the Gustav Draken’s equipment I gave it a laser rangefinder in a poor-fitting S 35 E nose that comes as an optional part with the vintage Revell mold – which is weird, because the recce Draken was built between 1963 and 1968 in 2 series, several years after the kit’s launch? Maybe the Mistercraft kit is based on the 1989 Revell re-boxing? But that kit also features an all-in-one pilot/seat part and a two-piece canopy… Weird!
Once the hull was closed many surface details had to be added. The afterburner air scoops were created from plastic profiles, actually roof rails in H0 scale. Styrene profile material was also used to create the intakes behind the cockpit, better than nothing. The OOB pitot on the fin was very robust, and since it would be wrong on a J 35 D I cut it off and added a fairing to the fin tip, actually a shortened/modified ACMI pod, which bears a better pitot alternative at its tip. The pitot on the nose was scratched from heated styrene, the kit offers no part at all.
Under the rear fuselage the whole tail wheel arrangement had to be scratched. The shallow fairing consists of a section from a Matchbox EA-6B drop tank, the wheel and its strut were tinkered together with bits from the scrap box and profile material. Not stellar, but better than OOB (= nothing!).
The landing gear struts were taken from the kit but beefed up with some details. The main wheels had to be replaced, the new ones come from a KP MiG-21, IIRC.
The ordnance consists of a pair of Rb 05’s from an Airfix Viggen, a pair of OOB drop tanks and MERs from a Matchbox A-7D, together with twelve streamlined bombs from the same kit – AFAID, Sweden never used MERs on their aircraft, but the bombs come pretty close to some bombs that I have seen as AJ 37 ordnance. Most pylons are OOB, I just added a single ventral station and two outer hardpoints under the wings, but these were left empty as the tanks and the MERs already take up a lot of space. The Rb 05s received a prominent place under the air intakes.
