I
have a huge admiration for the achievements Swedish aviation industry and the
products of Saab. I also think many of their aircraft make very appealing
modeling subjects. The Lansen is a fine example of just how good Saab’s
products were even pre-Draken, Viggen and Gripen.
I
am very grateful that Heller chose to offer many of the early Saab products (J
21 and J 29 for example). The Heller kit offers the A or C versions, being
strike and reconnaissance versions respectively. Don’t ask me why, but I
opted to build the B version which is an all-weather fighter, and quite
different from the kit versions. The main changes I needed to make were to
the guns and rear fuselage.
I
made four 30 mm cannon troughs from tube to replace the J32 A’s 20mm cannon
which have doors over the blast tubes. Then I removed some of the rear
fuselage to correspond with the B’s rear end and a made a different
afterburner from scrap as the B had a more powerful Avon than the A or C
versions. I had read that the intakes on the B were larger too, but after
viewing photos I could see no difference, so I didn’t change the kit intakes.
I thought I might as well scribe the panel lines, refine the wing fences and
added some detail and radar scope to the cockpits.
The
real problem stated when I had the model nearly finished and realized that
Lansens always have their four very unusual air-brakes open on the ground.
This meant I had to hack into the fuselage after I had the wings on, and seek
close-up photos of the rather intricate air-brakes so that I could scratch-build
some from 5 and 10 thou card. I must thank Andreus Samuelson, a Swedish
modeler, who very kindly mailed me photos and a vac-form belly tank, plus heaps
of other very useful information (By the way, if your reading this Andreus,
e-mail me as I have lost my address book when changing computers!). Suffice
to say, my J 32 A and C Lansens will be flying when I build them.
Mark
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