FPL 61 Bulldog, Swedish Air Force - KP
Box art with a nice painting of an Army Bulldog above a typical hazy Swedish landscape.
Painting instructions are provided on the bottom of the box - the splinter camo looks intriguing but in order to finish this project before the Sun turns into a red giant, I will just do the standard Swedish Air Force version.
One page instructions - 'tis definitely not a difficult assembly but I expect each part needing to be scraped, sanded and adjusted to fit. The color callouts need some own research as they pretty much just state basic colors such as "green", "brown" or "grey".
Everything in once plastic bag. The transparencies have their separate bag inside.
One fret with a handful of parts - that's all! Wow, this is going to be a very, very tiny model! A bit of an aggressive molding with plenty of flash everywhere. The propeller looks like a baseball bat. Well, not something that a few sessions with sanding sticks cannot remedy. Part 6 (the one missing just below and the the left of the propeller) was found inside the transparency bag. Quality control in action?
Recessed panel lines, but not a lot of surface detail really. Some lines end prematurely before the edges of the parts and will need to be extended. The entire frame of the canopy is molded on the fuselage - I can definitely see why, as it would otherwise need to be an extemely thin part to hug the fuselage like this, but it also means that if you want to display the canopy open, you need to be prepared to do some serious plastic surgery. Personally, I won't bother.
Flaps and ailerons should be possible to cut loose and reposition for some added interest if that's your cup of tea. The non-invasive removal of the molding gates will be a much more difficult task...
The same for the elevators on the stabilizers too. You can also see the rather coarse and grainy molding here (although remember, this is an unforgiving macro shot).
The molding on the smaller details is a bit rough and will need some careful cleaning up. The molding gates are really awful. Also the third seat in the rear of the cockpit is not provided (although it can even be seen in the front cover painting), and will need to be sourced from somewhere else.
Canopy and side windows. A little bit warped, but so big, that most of the iinside details will still be clearly visible. If you want to modify the canopy to be posed open, you will need to separate the windscreen from the sliding hood. The two small side windows only vaguely resemble the apertures in the fuselage where they are supposed to fit. I am sure that will be tons of fun!
As I mentioned before, the actual frames of the sliding canopy is molded on the fuselage. The front molding gate therefore needs to be handled with great care as it is not on the frame but protrudes from the bottom of the glass itself. Definitely needs to be removed with a super thin razor saw!
A small decal sheet with some stencils provided. Some (but not all) of the dayglo fields are provided as red decals. The color is not quite right, so the fields are definitely best to be painted on using the decals as templates. I have done it once on my Saab Safir, so the same method should work here as well.
Instruments and seat belts provided as decals. The decals are all a bit fuzzy and poorly printed, but since the canopy is closed, they should do just fine in this small scale.
Ouch, that pixel pattern is just too bad, I might need to try to source some replacement decals from my spares stash.
Starting with removing the wings from the sprue and cleaning up the edges. As you can see, the molding gates are pretty rough and careful sanding is required to smoothen things out.
Some careful work with sanding sticks and things are already starting to look better. But the plastic is a bit soft and kind of stretchy, making it difficult to get an absolutely smooth and razor sharp result.
The central console is cemented in place before tackling the seats. The Swedish Bulldogs were equipped with a third seat in the back, which is not provided in the kit. Some rummaging in the spares box came up with three decent seats (not sure from which kit), which after some filing and reshaping should look reasonable. Of course cushions need to be fabricated to make the seats sort of "ergonomically feasible", but that should be an easy task.
Here are the finished seats with seat cushions fabricated from styrene strips. When painted and embellished with seat belts, they should look convincing, especially when seen through the thick canopy.
Before going any further, let's tackle those tiny but intimidating side windows. Just as I thought, the fit is absolutely abysmal. They fit where they touch and just barely follow the curvature of the fuselage. The photo shows what it looks like out of the box: pretty discouraging.
Half an hour of sanding and scraping sessions later, they were shoehorned into the fuselage apertures and were secured with a few careful applications of Tamiya Extra Thin cement and then strings of superglue applied with a metal wire. A word of advice, do not use acrylic adhesive, as the bond will be too weak and you might end up pushing in the windows into the cockpit during later handling! You have been warned!
Cockpit assembled, painted with Tamiya acrylics and weathered with Tamiya Weathering pastels. I didn't want to spend too much time on this build, but at least I tried to add some detail with some styrene rods and bits to the cockpit side walls and the center console. The slightly oversized seatbelts are from Eduard PE set of generic seatbelts. The instrument panel is the kit's decals.
Fuselage halves joined. The fit is slightly off and the fuselage has a tendency to bend sideways. Also the mating surfaces are a bit rounded, so there are some gaps that need to be filled.
Filling the gaps with Tamiya White Putty. Filled joins sanded smooth, then new small gaps and pitmarks found, refilled and resanded. Quite a boring and arduous task, but time spent here will pay dividends later when it is time to prime the model.
Wings attached. Again, the fit is pretty bad and some firm persuasion is required to hold the parts in place while the cement cures. And yes, some more filling and sanding is required.
Stabilizer added, wing joins filled with dissolved putty and when dry, all fillings carefully polished smooth. A very dusty model needing a good cleanup under running water before continuing!
Landing gears attached so I can test out the amount of required nose weight for the model to avoid sitting on its tail. Note the amount of Tamiya White Putty needed to completely hide the gaps, steps and some rough areas in the plastic..
All these fishing weights need to be glued into the engine compartment to make the model stand firmly on its all three wheels! I use acrylic glue for fixing lead weights inside a model.
Okay, now it looks the way it should. Seriously folks, don't skimp on the nose weight with this model. All those weights just barely manage to pivot the model over to the front.
The large canopy is cemented on with acrylic cement (Ammo Ultra Glue). The fit is quite good, but because of the frames being presented on the fuselage, the cement lines are visible through the clear canopy, not hidden by the painted on frames as usual. Not sure how it can be eliminated.
Comentarii
46 10 August 2022, 16:25
CuajeteThomas, I knew you were going to get this kit! 🙂
I was hesitating a lot between the Swedish box and the Jordanian box. It took me a long time to decide, but in the end I ordered the Jordanian one because I already have several future projects with that fantastic Swedish scheme.
I follow you with great interest (as always). It is quite possible that I will finally regret choosing the Jordanian box 😉
10 August 2022, 18:46
Thomas KolbDid some dry-fitting yesterday, and just as I expected by the looks of it, it is definitely A-model quality. A lot of fettling, scraping and sanding is required for a decent fit of the major parts such as the fuselage halves and the wings. Good thing it is a small model!
11 August 2022, 07:18
Erik De SmetIt seems that it is of the same "quality" as their SF260 and Alpha jet kits. Have you ever built the venerable Airfix kit ?
11 August 2022, 08:19
Michael KohlI will watch too how you turn this ugly duck into a beautiful swan.
11 August 2022, 08:52
Thomas KolbErik, I actually think that this is a retooling of the Airfix kit. Slightly different parts and recessed panel lines, but the breakdown is almost identical.
11 August 2022, 09:29
Daniel MysakI´m following. Looks like a bunch of work to get a proper model out of this kit. I'm sure you will handle it.
11 August 2022, 13:57
CuajeteI think KP/AZ should start an improvement their molds after so many kit releases and sales, as Special Hobby has already successfully done. It is curious that for some kits they make good molds (such as the Bf-109) and for others they are so mediocre.
Despite this, I am sure that Thomas will do an extraordinary job 👍
11 August 2022, 19:51
Robert PodkońskiI am a little late, but from now I will follow with pleasure and interest (like all Thomas's previous builds 😉 )
14 August 2022, 17:36
Tom B.Looks like a lot of craftsmanship will go into this kit before the end of the build... Curiously following 👍
14 August 2022, 18:52
Thomas KolbThis little kit is definitely putting up a fight in every step. Silly me, I thought this was going to be a relaxed weekend project, ha ha. 🙂
14 August 2022, 19:04
Erik De SmetKP short run = long work. I prefer Vallejo putty for filling seams on this type of kits, as it comes with a fine tip
15 August 2022, 18:39
Thomas KolbErik yes, I think the photo shows a bit of my frustration with the seam lines. It should not be like this for a 2022 tooling.
15 August 2022, 19:34
CuajeteThomas, will the skinny front landing gear hold the weight of all those fishing weights?
17 August 2022, 10:59
Thomas KolbWell, those weights are juuuust barely enough to keep the Bulldog on its nose gear and still kind of pivots around its main gear. Good thing that the entire engine compartment behind the dashboard is empty so with some Tetris skills you can fill it completely with those fishing weights.
17 August 2022, 17:44
Erik De SmetSo the front wheel does not support any weight, as the nose is in balance with the tail. I had the same problem with KPs SIAI Marchetti, and the SH Marchetti needs also quite some weight in the nose.
17 August 2022, 17:57
Michael Kohlnot a shake an bake-kit for sure. I like how you tackle it. For maximum usage of weight in tight spaces consider lead granules. They come rather cheap by the kilogram and have a diameter of max 1 - 2 mm. You can even drill a hole into the fuselage after it is closed and pour the granules in - followed by some white glue to fix them.
18 August 2022, 08:16
Thomas KolbAfter having lingered in the limbo state of half-finished projects, I have decided to reboot this build. The screwed up paintjob was removed with IPA alcohol and the model is now back to bare plastic. Some correcting fills are done and it is soon time to reapply the primer. I will make my life easier this time and just build the standard Swedish Air Force version. But I have already purchased a second kit to be finished with the Swedish Army splinter camouflage as I think I know this time how to do it properly. Stay tuned!
5 July, 14:37
J35JGreat to see that you have restarted the kit. The weight distribution is a real pain. Had similar challenges with my Airfix SK61 build some months ago, Liquid Gravity sorted the issue.
SwAF livery will look aces. Keep up the spirit!👏🏼👍🏻
5 July, 15:47
Album info
The SA Bulldog served in the Swedish Air Force as a trainer aircraft (called SK 61) and in the Swedish Army as artillery observer aircraft (called FPL 61C). The latter were the first aircraft in the Swedish Armed Forces to use the new four color FOA splinter ("fields and meadows") camouflage.
