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Steven Van Dyck
I started this reconnaissance Viggen project out of an early interest in this plane, while I never encountered a kit of it until I in recent years went on eBay. It will have woodland camo. You'll see I now removed the detail of the instrument surfaces, to be able to apply the Maestro photo etch replacement.

Matti Thomaes
Waw, Steven, you never do just a simple build do you, and this combined with the two aircraft carriers, how do you find the time.

S M
Ambitious project! I'm in!

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks for the interest and no worries that it will get built! Now the cockpit ispainted and got its Maestro PE. Only I will have to wriggle a bit with the seat, it's out of center.

S M
The cockpit looks pretty!

J35J
Great start! Following👍🏻

Michael Kohl
No Viggen without me. 🙂

Steven Van Dyck
The wheel bays got some PE. The seat position in the cockpit was offset and I already closed down the fuselage, but the floor could be reached through the sides. I inserted a brass rod and yanked it free, to correct the cockpit angle. I notice more parts that have some unwanted degree of freedom.

Steven Van Dyck
The jet exhaust and the trust reverser are painted. I used a chrome tin can as base and then a mix of red and black Vallejo for the burnt steel. Under the reverser I used Green Stuff Holographic because that effect is visible in the reference book.

Steven Van Dyck
The wings could be attached with the jet exhaust finished. The fit is good but some clamping is still needed. The trailing edges are a bit blunt and took an hour of filing and filling the gap to be realistic, just like the part under the fuselage. Then the jet intakes were added.

Steven Van Dyck
Canards are added, but not the ones that were prescribed. The other ones look much better and can have the flaps down. The tail plane was adapted like the wings. Some PE is added.

Sergej I
Great 👍

S M
It's taking shape pretty fast👍

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks, guys. Today you get the Maestro airbrakes. Nice detail, but there is no space for the mechanical parts that make them work. I might cut into the interior parts to add those. I also scratched a part for the jet exhaust that's not in the kit but should have been in the PE set in my opinion, as it is clearly visible from outside. And then I had an idea for the missing rivets that should be on the wings and the canards. Why not add these with the Mastertools Rivet Punch? That was lingering in my toolbox for a year, now it's very useful.

Steven Van Dyck
The airbrake locks are now perforated. The tail fin is regraved and the undercarriage is completed as a dry-fit. I saw one camera-glass is partly detached but I can't get into the nose cone without drilling now to push it back.

Steven Van Dyck
The half-relief ducts in the wheelbays are replaced with scratch pipes that are now correctly shaped. It seems Special Hobby had reversed the reference picture and bent the tubes the wrong way around. I found a 2 mm steel wire that was barely bendable into the required shape, and a 1,5 mm aluminium wire that bent far easier for a side duct. In the process I managed to lose one of the landing gear parts.

J35J
Follow with great intrest, excellent build log!👍🏻

Steven Van Dyck
Welcome, today some hydraulic lines and a locking system are added to the wheel wells.

DuperScale
Awesome modeling here. Watching with Big interest.

Desert Marlin
Great work!

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks, guys, all are welcome. The wheelbay parts that are green are now painted in the dark green camo color. Some modulation was done.

Kim Branders
Knap Steven 😉

Steven Van Dyck
Bedankt, Kim.

The outside part of the wheelbays and the landing gear are now painted with Gunze 308.

Steven Van Dyck
The grey underside is now painted Gunze 308 and then shadowed and highlighted. For the moment the masking is almost done.

Steven Van Dyck
The light green is painted with Gunze 58, using some transparent green and citron yellow to modulate.

Desert Marlin
Absolutely perfect color for the factory primer!

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks, Marlin, but that is also what is advised by Tarangus as the light green camo color. I have now added the pictures of the rest of the camo painting stages for Gunze green 309, Brown 310 and Nato Black. I painted the wheels using a circle diagram and a chrome rattle can.

Desert Marlin
Absolutely excellent! I was not sure if that was your base coat or in fact a part of the camo. Looks really great! Can't wait to see how the markings come out!

S M
Camo is coming up nicely👍

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks, guys, but I have been changing some of the colors. The greens were too different and especially the Gunze 309 dark green had to be more of a light olive. The solution was to reapply the black masking, but most of that had to be remodelled slightly as it doesn't fill the holes left by the other colors. Then I filtered with transparent green, so the light green is softened. For the dark green I only had an opaque filter, but it did the job quite well. If you check the tail image in the book, some of the spots switch color at the panellines and this would mean extra cutting work. I also added the CMK wheels but you should drill axle holes in the brake disks to be able to fix them. I made a dry-fit of the landing gear. The airbrake plates are a brown red composite and I painted the rest and the trust reverser gun metal.

Desert Marlin
It only gets better! Keep it up!

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks, Marlin. Now the braking lines, airbrakes and the front landing gear are fully detailed. Strangely only about half of the mecahical parts of that gear are not in the kit, so I had to do a lot of scratch to complete it. Also at the main gear an actuator is missing. The decals are all done now but those of the large wing pylons are impossible to get fitting. The shape of the AIM-9 pylons is wrong and I should have replaced these with some aftermarket. I noticed the viggen is a toe-top-sitter, the nose wheels are a few millimeters up. This is a problem if I want to put it on a mirror. The only solution wold be to knock out the camera glass again and put some weight in there.

Mr James
Great work on the camo painting.

Steven Van Dyck
Thanks, Mr James. I noticed that the black camo paint shows through the red decals, so I covered these with extra red paint. I also noticed that some Viggens seem to show black de-icing surfaces, though not all. I added it to the model as this was easy to mask. Then I added a gloss coat.