1:72 Viggens (Matchbox SK-37 and Hasegawa AJ-37)

[Ed Sunder]

Growing up, I thought the Viggen was the coolest plane I'd ever seen. The canards, the splinter camo - just a beautiful airplane. I've had a couple older Viggen kits sitting in the stash for a while and I've decided to build them. I have the Matchbox two-seater and the old Hasegawa single seater. I'm going to do them both in the splinter camo scheme.

Surveying the kits, they are not great. The cockpits, in particular are terrible. So last week I decided to do some 3D designing in Fusion 360 and build some cockpits that will replace the existing cockpits. First up, here's the Matchbox kit (one of the two seats is lost) which has no cockpit tub, stick, panels or anything but seats floating on little platforms. Below is the 3D printed version that I designed with a shot of primer on it.


And here is the Hasegawa version, very basic, with my version below it:



And here are all the parts together:


I think my versions look a wee bit better.

And here are the control panels, painted up:

The bottom one is for the Hasegawa and the other two are for the Matchbox kit. I know that the rear seat panel is slightly different than the front, but I wasn't willing to spend the time modelling the slight differences, and no one will be able to see that anyway. Remember, this is 1:72, so those panels are like 7mm wide.

And here are the cockpit tubs and seats:


I've already designed my own masks for the splinter camo and cut them out on my vinyl cutter. I can't wait to start putting this thing together. Since I don't have any decals for this, I'm planning on painting pretty much all of the details, thought I may be able to find some stencils in my spares. Anyway, it should be a lot of fun. One other thing I had to design and print is the nosecone for the Matchbox kit because I have no idea where that has gone.

 

[rtfoe]

Hi Ed, at 1/72 these 3D resin details you made will do the job. Pity you didn't add in the seatbelts or you could still add it into your design and reprint. I'm guessing you're putting in the pilots so no seatbelts.
Since the easy availability of 3D printing the AM guys will need to up their game. A colleague of mine does his own 3D print of undercarriage and wheels for his planes. I'm green with envy.

Cheers,
Wabble

 

[Neil Merryweather]

Way to go!
Very cool and very nicely done.

 

[stillp]

Very nicely done Ed. I guess you could sell those easily.
Pete

 

[Ed Sunder]

I am planning on adding pilots - I just love an occupied jet. That said, adding seatbelts with the Fusion 360 software is pretty challenging - it's not easy to design things that aren't geometric shapes. I do have some software that allows me to edit and sculpt models using my VR headset, which would make it a lot easier to add them. I may do that if I have the time at some point. For these, though, I'll be using pilot figures and pieces of tape to make the belts between them and the seats.

As for selling them, I may do that at some point with some of the stuff I make, though these two kits are pretty old so I'm not sure how much interest there would be. Of course, it costs me almost nothing to print a few. Maybe I should put an ad up on ebay....

 

[adt70hk]

That's brilliant Ed. Top notch work!

Very well done.

Andrew

 

[colin m]

A Viggen, great stuff. I built one as a kid, a little while back, which might have been a Matchbox. Anyway, I’ll re-live my youth through your build.

 

[Ed Sunder]

And a small update. I got out my pilot figures and realized that the cockpit for the Hasegawa kit is a bit small for a pilot, so I went ahead and added some tape seat belts for that one. The canopy will be able to be open on that model so having it without a pilot should look pretty good. Here's the seat with the belts added (remember, it's 6mm wide):


And here are a couple shots of the pilots who will be in the two seater:





I still need to put a wash on everything, dullcoat and then (highlight where appropriate) with gloss. Oh, and yes, I chopped the one pilot's feet off. His callsign is "Stumpy".

 

[Ed Sunder]

I've decided to start with the Hasegawa single seater to try out stuff and test things out first. I've glued the fuselage halves together and primed the model. I've left the seat and the control panel off for now and am going to try using my vinyl cutter to replicate a thin yellow line on the nosecone. To start with I painted the nose yellow with some rattle can paint:


Once that dried I put on the mask:


I know it's really over scale - the actual line is probably a centimeter thick at most and that line is probably more like 10 cm, but I think it'll look cool.

Next is the black paint:



It's not the smoothest finish, but I'll gloss coat it later. It really shows up well, which is what I was hoping for. I may see if I can do a thinner one for the two seater...

That's all for now.

 

[Mini Me]

That came out really well for a trial piece.....and stunning against the black background.

 

[boatman]

HI Ed very nice work there an i saw a real viggen at RAF COTISHALL comin in to land an ive always been fasinated with this aircraft as i think it was the first plane id ever seen with them canards on an i thought then what a fantastic futeristic plane an i really like the layout of the undercart on this plane as at the time had never seen nothing like it so something new idea
chris

 

[Mickc1440]

Great work Ed, those printed parts look really smart

 

[Ed Sunder]

Well I've been working on trying stuff out on the Hasegawa model and it's pretty much done. I'd give it a B-. The finish isn't great and the kit isn't great, TBH, but it's done and I've learned some stuff for doing the Matchbox one next. I had hoped with the Hasegawa one to have the cockpit open, but I realized that the canopy I had that could be posed open was from a different kit...

Here I started by painting the underlying green layer:

Here it is after some of the camo painting:



I probably should have done more about fairing in the inlets. Ah well....

And here it is, done. The finish doesn't look as bad as in the photos, but it's not great and there are lots of other issues with the model. I've learned a lot about how to do the camo on the next one. I'm also going to use slightly different colors as well. The decals didn't work very well so I printed some on my laser printer and so the Sweden roundels, the slime lights and the FARA things are decals. The rest are painted.

 

[Mini Me]

That is quite a flying machine Ed.....must have been fun masking for the camo!

 

[Mickc1440]

Very striking paint job Ed

 

[David Lovell]

Brilliant thanks for sharing Ed looking forward to the matchbox version. Dave

 

[Jakko]

Just came across this, I thought it might be interesting in this thread, even though Ed got passed the cockpit ages ago:

 

[Ed Sunder]

Super cool video - thanks for sharing!

 

[Airborne01]

Well done on the cam mate - the coward in me would have opted for the grey finish though!
Steve