Johan C

Hi MarkW, Well, the panel lines is an issue but not biggest one I'm afraid... You need to put in a lot of work to make a fairly accurate replica of the Gripen. If you buy the a Best Choice Gripen kit you get a lot of resin that fixes the most obvious errors but you need some skill and a lot of patiens to get it done. Areas that certainly need some attention are: - The cockpit is very poor. Use CMK cockpit instead. - The new APU bulge if you build a C or D Gripen. - Sink marks on multiple places on the wing. - The panel lines are OK in some places but terrible in others. - All the antenna

The pictures seems to be back again... Having some problems with Telia where the pictures are stored, they go offline sometimes and I don't know why. Anyway, here are some fresh pics of the cockpit. You can also see some CA glue on the panel lines that I'm going to sand down. Cheers, /Johan

Hi Awan, Well, only a little progress... But all the cockpit parts are installed and now I'm filling the panel lines with CA glue so I can rescribe them. Thanks a lot Mike! Here are som pics on the latest work. The cockpit fitted OK after some work, in some places it is to wide and had to be trimmed. Here you can also see the dreadful panel lines I'm working with now... Had to add some extra plastic to the inner side wall because of the trimmed rear wall. But it was easier than I thought it would be and turned out nicely. Since I'm building a test aircraft it has some extra "devi

Don't know if it's of any inspiration, but here are two pictures of a 1:72 Gripen I built several years ago. The plan was to build every paint schemes that swedish Gripen had, but I only managed to build this one... Cheers! /Johan

Thanks Niklas! Yes, this kit is far from perfect, maybe not even "good". But please build it anyway, can't get enough of them! /Johan

Thanks Qian, I'll keep on working! /Johan

Thanks Janne! I agree the weathering is subtle, but nevertheless it's a bit overdone if you compare to a real Gripen seat. They hardly show any signs of wear at all... But in this case I think it's OK, the seats will look to clean without the weathering. /Johan

Long time since the last update, I apologize for that... But now the bang seats are finished! Added around twenty parts to each seat to spice them up a bit. The weathering may be a little bit overdone compared to the real thing but I'll live with that. Before the weathering the seats looked just like black blobs... So what's next? Think I start the work with the cockpit side walls, they have some serious fit problems and some of the details (for instance the throttle) needs to be reworked. Cheers! /Johan

Hello! I have been working a little bit on the Gripen kit. The resin inserts for the APU is in place and everything is sanded. Have to do some rescribing of the panels later. The leading edge of the fin is sanded and the front part of the fin pod has been reshaped. The rear part of the pod I have to scratch build because the pod in the kit is not correct for a JAS39D. I have also been working a little bit on the cockpit. I realized that the rear wall of the rear cockpit was much to steep, the seat didn't fit and it looked terrible. I had to sand away a lot of the resin at the top of the

No small exhaust-vent or fin pod in the MPM JAS 39C Gripen kit either :P Well, seems like I have to reshape the existing pod myself then /Johan C

Well, these parts are not mentioned in the instructions, so I guess they aren't supposed to be included. The exterior set I use is labeled "JAS39C", I think they added these parts when they did the "JAS39D exterior set". But I have a MPM 39C kit, have to check if they are included there. In that case I can borrow them... Glad you could solve the problem with the wheel bays! CMK should do something about their quality control... Thanks for the info on the intake covers. I'll try it out and see if I can do something similar. Cheers! /Johan C

Nice Tobias! Your seats look super! Can I have some of the decals for my Draken please? The chaff and flare dispensers look good too, didn't know you made the masters... Cheers! /Johan

As usual it looks terrific Emil! Hmm, this exhaust-vent wasn't even included in my CMK exterior set. Seems like there are some extras in the MPM kit! Also missing the IFR probe and the rear part of the jammer pod on the fin that you used on your kit. What kind of metal did you use in your intake cover? With some paint on it would look very convincing. It wrinkels just like the real ones. Cheers! /Johan

Hi! Another small update... Holes for the APU resin inserts are cut. Actually they are already installed, but I ran out of battery in the camera so photos of this have to wait until later... Added some more plumbing to the wheel bays. The leading edge of the fin is way to blunt, here I have sanded and shaped the lower leading edge so you can see the difference. On the real A/C the leading edge is very sharp. I may have to sharpen it even more to have a correct look. Cheers! /Johan

Here are some photos of the engine of the Gripen I took a couple of years ago. On the first two you can see a little bit of the inside. And this is how a used engine looks like... Cheers! /Johan