Tarangus 1/72 J29 Tunnan

Post by **TommyKillander** » Sun May 03, 2015 11:17 am

Hey guys,

I plan to build the epic SAAB J29 Tunnan as my entry to the Homeland GB.

SAAB J29 Tunnan entered service in 1950 and were quickly nicknamed "Flygande Tunnan" (Flying Barrel) by the swedish population, and the reason is obvious if you take a look at the chubby de Havilland Ghost engine. Tunnan remained in service until the 70s.

So, looking at the kit I will build:

I will go for the Gul Jakob (Yellow J) paint scheme.

I will also add some aftermarket stuff:

I have done some research in swedish forums about this kit and in general it gets very good rating and it seems to be an easy build

Post by **Nige201980** » Sun May 03, 2015 11:47 am

Great looking kit mate this is going to be an intresting build of a cracking looking aircraft.

Post by **JonMW** » Sun May 03, 2015 10:00 pm

Looking forward to the build. Have always like the Tunnan, it's a iconic plane. It would be nice if they made a 1/48 version of it as well.

Post by **TommyKillander** » Mon May 04, 2015 7:19 pm

JonMW wrote:Looking forward to the build. Have always like the Tunnan, it's a iconic plane. It would be nice if they made a 1/48 version of it as well.

Nige201980 wrote:Great looking kit mate this is going to be an intresting build of a cracking looking aircraft.

I hope I can make it justice!

The Tarangus kit looks much much better than the Revell kit I built when I got back into the hobby. I'm hoping that Tarangus makes a 1/48 version of the Tunnan, that would be awesome

Post by **Lee** » Mon May 04, 2015 8:48 pm

Watching this with interest

Post by **patrickroos** » Tue May 05, 2015 5:40 pm

Nice choice Tommy!
This was the plane that took Sweden to the top of the aviation industry.
Looking forward to seeing it come together especially with all the extra goodies.

Lycka till med bygget!!

Good luck with the build!

Post by **TommyKillander** » Tue May 05, 2015 6:54 pm

Lee wrote:Watching this with interest

No pressure...

Post by **TommyKillander** » Tue May 05, 2015 7:07 pm

patrickroos wrote:Nice choice Tommy!
This was the plane that took Sweden to the top of the aviation industry.
Looking forward to seeing it come together especially with all the extra goodies.

Lycka till med bygget!!

Good luck with the build!

Thanks Patrick!

Post by **TommyKillander** » Tue May 05, 2015 9:59 pm

Ok, here we go.... I'm very eager to start building this!

The kit plastic parts has very good details OOB, so the photoetch isn't a must really.

...and some parts are resin (ejection-seat, wheelbays, engine air intake and HUD projector)

and I will spice it up even more with some PE

MaestroModels have kindly prepainted the PE, which is nice, but there is one concern

As you can see the cockpit has a much darker green tone than the prepainted photoetch (the photo of the PE looks a bit dark because to the light, but it's much lighter IRL):

The only viable solution I see is to try to colormatch the photoetch light green color and use that as a base color for the cockpit. But nevermind, I will not go ballistic over this...

Today I started to clear the cockpit parts from the sprue. Note that some parts are very delicate, so use the spruecutter wisely:

I also started to build the cockpit and prepare the surfaces for photoetch

Tomorrow I will continue with placing the unpainted PE, clearing the resin parts from flash and prepare for primer and base color.

I'm thinking of adding lead wire and some plasticard in the wheelbays to make it look more "busy". Need to find some good photos of that first.

Cheers

Post by **TommyKillander** » Wed May 06, 2015 9:10 pm

Hello,

Just a small update today.

Managed to place the unpainted PE in the cockpit and also started to prepare the instrument panels.

Have been checking photos on the internet all evening to find som good references for adding more details. There are a lot photos but most of them shows the instrumentpanels from the seat

The ejection seat have been cleared from flash and I have added some wires and tubing on the back panel. Those parts are now ready for primer.

The instrument panel parts have been glue together with CA. I aligned them, held them together firmly and dipped the edges in CA glue, careful not to leave any glue on the frontside. Seemed to work fine. I will put small drops of Micro Kristal Klear in the meters I think.

Cheers

Post by **TommyKillander** » Thu May 07, 2015 10:02 pm

Hi,

This build progresses quite good and I have been able to squeeze in a couple of hours at the bench every day this week. Good stuff!

Did a quick fit check of the fuselage halfes today and realised that there are a couple of ejection pin marks that collides with the cockpit. That was easily fixed in 30 seconds with a Dremel. The parts fit together good, but there no alignment pins so gluing together the fuselage has to be done carefully.
There is no warping and the panel-lines look nice.

I have primed and coated the cockpit with Tamiya XF-71 Cockpit Green and did some detail painting of the stick and rudder pedals. I did an attempt to colormatch the PE panels but realised that most of the floor and sides will be covered by sheets of PE and the ejection seat anyway so I settled with plain XF-71. Also put on some Ultimate Dark Dirt wash, just to accentuate the pipes and cables on the back panel.

The seat was painted in Aluminium, Khaki Drab and Dark Yellow and is ready for PE and wash.

I saw in one photo that one of the side panels had a leather pocket, so I scratchbuilt one out of masking tape.

Thats all for today. Tomorrow I will place the seatbelt and the rest of the PE in the cockpit before I move on to the wheel bays.

Cheers

Post by **patrickroos** » Thu May 07, 2015 11:13 pm

Looking good Tommy!

Post by **TommyKillander** » Fri May 08, 2015 6:38 am

patrickroos wrote:Looking good Tommy!

Thanks!

The wash didn't come out as I planned it, but I will fix that later today - most will be covered by PE anyway.

Cheers!

Post by **TommyKillander** » Sat May 09, 2015 10:54 am

Hi again,

I have placed the PE panels next to the ejection seat, added some wash and sealed it with Micro Flat. The instrument panel and side panels have been added as well.

At first I couldn't make up my mind if should use CA or PVA glue, but the choice fell on the Micro Kristal Klear PVA; I needed to adjust the IP to align it with the rudder pedals and the stick.
The sidepanels are slightly curved to follow the inside of the pit and I wasn't sure how to get everything is the right position...

Using CA would set everything rock hard but the glue seam is quite brittle, because the PE edge is perpendicular with the floor surface. So I decided to use PVA and glue the sides with ~1 mm play so the panels get squeezed into position when I put the fuselage halves together, since PVA glue gives a elastic seam.
Keeping my fingers crossed that it works when I assemble the aircraft body

I'm quite happy with the result sofar. The only PE part that is missing is the red handle on top of the ejectionseat, but I will put in that one, last thing I do before I put the canopy on. I will leave the canopy open (back position), like in this picture:

SwAF Quiz: Can you spot all the aircrafts in picture ?

Stay tuned!

Post by **JediBoer** » Sat May 09, 2015 12:59 pm

TommyKillander wrote: SwAF Quiz: Can you spot all the aircrafts in picture ?

Tunnan, Dragon, and Viggen?

Post by **planemaker** » Sat May 09, 2015 2:27 pm

Absolutely great work on the cockpit at this scale!

Looks like a great build, gonna be following this.

The aircrafts in the pic are: Beagle 125 Bulldog, Saab J29 Tunnan, Saab J35 Draken, Saab J37 Viggen, Saab SK105 and a North American AT-6 Texan.

Post by **TommyKillander** » Sat May 09, 2015 3:29 pm

planemaker wrote:Absolutely great work on the cockpit at this scale! Looks like a great build, gonna be following this.

The aircrafts in the pic are: Beagle 125 Bulldog, Saab J29 Tunnan, Saab J35 Draken, Saab J37 Viggen, Saab SK105 and a North American AT-6 Texan.

Awesome, you spot more aircrafts than me

I can only spot the Bulldog (SK61), Tunnan, Draken and Viggen

Cheers

Post by **Bissyboat** » Sat May 09, 2015 4:03 pm

Great looking office.

Post by **TommyKillander** » Sat May 09, 2015 4:37 pm

I have started to build the airframe now and have taken a more thorough look on the kit as well as some hands-on experience, so I can have an opinion on it

First of all; this is not a kit for a beginner.

There are plenty of flash and other moulding artefacts on some of the styrene parts. The ejection pins are poorly placed and untrimmed which causes collisions. There are no guide pins anywhere, so you need to be careful when you glue parts together so they match all the way.

But does this make it a bad kit?

I must admit that I'm a little biased (since Tarangus is a Swedish manufacturer) but I would not call this a bad kit. The reason is that the kit design itself is sound, the shape and details of the aircraft are accurate and after the parts are cleaned from flash there is very little steps and gaps between parts. This means that you can't speedbuild this kit, but that is not an issue for a serious modeller anyway.

Is it worth the money ?

Honestly, it's quite an expensive kit, but hell yeah it's worth it (atleast I think it is)!

Tarangus is a small manufacturer trying to put accurate models on the market without having a big budget. However, they are not stupid and are well aware of the limitations of the tooling technology they have at hand, so they dont even try to put the most detailed parts in the sprue and instead the make them in resin.
If I may guess; they have negotiated with the tooling manufacturer without compromising with the shape and details of the tooling - in return they probably had to take shortcuts that makes the kit a little more difficult to build, possibly also leaving out small details that would raise the cost.

One part in the kit (HUD glass) they even state in the instructions that you should scratch-build the part, because this is easy to do using a piece of clear plastic sheet. Adding one more single part made by a different manufacturing process (even a tiny 2x2mm die-cut piece of PET) to the bill of material would raise the cost for the customer more than it was worth.

So to conclude; It is a good kit for a motivated modeller that loves Tunnan and isn't looking for a "quickie"

Hope this makes sense.

Post by **TommyKillander** » Sat May 09, 2015 4:43 pm

Bissyboat wrote:Great looking office.

Thanks Bissyboat!

Post by **JonMW** » Sat May 09, 2015 5:33 pm

That cockpit is looking really nice, and it's so small!

I fully agree with you about Tarangus. I think the have reached a good compromise of quality and price, which can be really hard. I know from my own work designing and manufacturing brakes for race cars/bikes. We want to make the best brakes in the world but no body would afford them, just increasing the performance by 5% doubles the cost. And I think Tarangus is at pretty much that level, if they want to increase the detail level by just a bit it would raise the price a lot. Unless they start making a lot bigger series but then you get into a lot of other problems.

Post by **TommyKillander** » Sun May 10, 2015 9:13 am

JonMW wrote:That cockpit is looking really nice, and it's so small!

I fully agree with you about Tarangus. I think the have reached a good compromise of quality and price, which can be really hard. I know from my own work designing and manufacturing brakes for race cars/bikes. We want to make the best brakes in the world but no body would afford them, just increasing the performance by 5% doubles the cost. And I think Tarangus is at pretty much that level, if they want to increase the detail level by just a bit it would raise the price a lot. Unless they start making a lot bigger series but then you get into a lot of other problems.

Thanks Jon, I will continue working on the wheel bays now. Hope I can do something interesting with that.

You're absolutely right. I do not have any first hand experience with the model business, but I been working with product development for many years and one thing that people in general fail to understand is that 10c added to the BOM will end up as 1$ cost increase for the end customer. For every new material, technology or complexity of the tooling you add, there is a cost increase down the logistics line (vendor selection/negotiation, material sourcing, quality assurance, handling of material in stock etc.). For a small company this ties up valuable resources and they lose business agility.

But back to the bench... Tunnan needs my attention

Post by **Lee** » Sun May 10, 2015 10:32 am

Looking great so far

Post by **TommyKillander** » Sun May 10, 2015 12:14 pm

Lee wrote:Looking great so far

Thanks Lee,

Post by **TommyKillander** » Sun May 10, 2015 8:50 pm

Hey guys,

Started working on the wheelbays today.

First of all did a quick check of the alignment of the resin parts just to make sure that they where horisontally aligned; it's ofcourse possible to adjust that later by cutting the length of the legs, but I prefer to get it right from the start.

The ribs on the fuselage inside where not much help, so I decided to add a corner myself so I can align the resin parts when I glue them in.

After that I could concentrate on the detailing of the wheelbays:

When I removed the excess moulding part I managed to destroy a support for a strut, so I had to scratch a new part. It's just a small chip of 0.5mm sheet plastic.

I'm not planning to go to town totally on the wheel bays and landing gear, but I have added some details just to make it more "busy".

Over and out for today, cheers !

Post by **patrickroos** » Tue May 12, 2015 6:41 pm

Looking good so far Tommy!

Great work on the cockpit, you have done a good job of blending the painting/weathering and the PE.
Very nice and it will for sure look great in there.

Post by **TommyKillander** » Tue May 12, 2015 9:24 pm

Hi,

Spent a couple of hours today clearing the parts from flash and dryfitting the aircraft frame and wings. Tedious work, but it has to be done before I start assembling the aircraft. The more careful I am, the easier the build and filling/sanding will be. And if I can reduce the amount of filling and sanding there will be less rescribing - which is something that I both fear and hate at the same time

The seams looks OK I think.

Also, I'm very pleased that the nose section now actually look like the real thing and does not need shitloads of filler. I thank Tarangus for that!

Cheers

Post by **TommyKillander** » Tue May 12, 2015 9:33 pm

patrickroos wrote:Looking good so far Tommy!
Great work on the cockpit, you have done a good job of blending the painting/weathering and the PE.
Very nice and it will for sure look great in there.

Thank you, Patrick!

There is plenty of time for this GB so I will not rush it. I will give this kit the attention that it deserves and try to build it at the best of my ability. When things start to get more difficult, it will just go slower I guess

Cheers

Post by **Aliktren** » Thu May 14, 2015 2:05 pm

looking great, loving the wire in the bays, good stuff!

Post by **TommyKillander** » Thu May 14, 2015 6:27 pm

Aliktren wrote:looking great, loving the wire in the bays, good stuff!

Thank you!

Post by **TommyKillander** » Thu May 14, 2015 6:51 pm

Hey guys,

Had a couple of hours at the bench today, working with random bits and pieces before I put the fuselage together.

The nose wheel bay was quite tricky to position. There are no ribs to glue it to and I did a couple of attempts to glue it in place freehand, but I could not get it to align properly (or it fell off). I checked on a couple forums and one solution where to put it on a sticky pin (using white tac) and insert it through the front before mounting the engine front

Tried that aswell and it failed horribly.

So I added a small strip of plasticard as a support. Worked perfectly! Why didn't I do that from the beginning ?!

I have also added a couple of air intakes and gun ports on the fuselage. The gunports look like this:

On the kit there are no recessions or pins for setting the gun ports. There are a couple of raised areas that sort of tell where the part should go, but they are smaller than the part itself.

This kept my poor brain (and fingers fiddleing with tiny bits of plastic) occupied for a couple of minutes before I realised that I need to scrape them off with a knife and glue the part flush to the fuselage.

There are lots of panel and rivet details around that area so I want to avoid using filler - but I managed to glue them tightly to the fuselage without any seam. I'm happy with that.

Just need to drill the ports open a bit more using a pin vice and they should be finished

Stay tuned!

Post by **Willem** » Thu May 14, 2015 6:54 pm

Lovely job on the details and a beautiful looking aircraft although it looks like it's found the keys the pie cupboard.

Post by **TommyKillander** » Thu May 14, 2015 7:11 pm

Willem wrote:Lovely job on the details and a beautiful looking aircraft although it looks like it's found the keys the pie cupboard.

Indeed, it looks like a chubby brother to the MiG-15.

SAAB gave the aircraft the type designation J29, but it were nicknamed "The Flying Barrel" by the Swedish population. SAAB didn't like that (of course) so they added the name to "Tunnan" and after that they always gave their aircrafts a type designation and a name - just to avoid some whitty person giving it a funny nickname...

Cheers

Post by **Willem** » Thu May 14, 2015 7:24 pm

Well, you're doing exquisite work. I'll be following your build.

Post by **TommyKillander** » Fri May 15, 2015 9:21 am

Willem wrote:Well, you're doing exquisite work. I'll be following your build.

Thanks mate!

Cheers

Post by **TommyKillander** » Fri May 15, 2015 9:37 am

Hello,

Did some more work on the main wheelbays yesterday, I think the weathering is done and they are ready to glue into the fuselage now.

Also gave the windows a Klear/Pledge/Future treatment. This is the first time I do this so I have no idea of the outcome. The main canopy was a success but I could not get an even coat on the front window, so after a couple of tries I cleaned it off. The Klear pooled up around all corners and even when I tried to remove the excess liquid using a cotton-bud touching the edge I could not get it to level.
All plastic parts have ofcourse been cleaned in a mild detergent before I started the build.

Post by **Lee** » Fri May 15, 2015 9:39 am

Looking good

Post by **Goose** » Fri May 15, 2015 1:29 pm

TommyKillander wrote:Hello,
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The good days are here, it's bbq time lol

Goose

Post by **TommyKillander** » Fri May 15, 2015 3:30 pm

Goose wrote:
The good days are here, it's bbq time lol

Goose

Hahaha.... The kit has been kind to me sofar - I have no plans to put it on fire

Post by **TommyKillander** » Fri May 15, 2015 3:31 pm

Lee wrote:Looking good

Thanks Lee!

Post by **JonMW** » Fri May 15, 2015 10:46 pm

Those wheel bays are looking nice!

Post by **TommyKillander** » Sat May 16, 2015 12:01 pm

JonMW wrote:Those wheel bays are looking nice!

Thanks!

Post by **TommyKillander** » Sat May 16, 2015 12:30 pm

Spent the morning masking wheelbays and cockpit and I have put the fuselage together. I really hope that I can remove the masking tape without destroying any of the small details. I have masked off some areas of the sticky side hope it's enough

I will probably use some white tac to fill any small gaps that is not covered by tape.

The plastic reacts well to Tamiya Extra Thin using just enough pressure to make gap close. I used the sanding stick a bit too much on the belly side of the fuselage when I removed the flash, so the gaps are more prominent there. But I think it's OK to use Mr Surfacer 500, no need for "liquid sprue".

Now I will concentrate on completing the cockpit HUD and front window so I can seal up the pit before I start to deal with the rest of the fuselage.

The HUD projector is a resin part and I need scratchbuild the glass using a small piece of plastic sheet.

Post by **TommyKillander** » Sat May 16, 2015 9:42 pm

Gahhh!

The whole morning I had this feeling that something wasn't right.... You can't put your finger on it but somewhere back in your mind all the alarm-clock go off like crazy

Went out to buy some stuff (no not more kits!) and when I got back it struck me;

I didn't check the balance before I glued the fuselage together - the Tunnan might be doomed to spend the rest of it's life tailsitting

Did a quick check and it didn't pass the test with flying colors, so I had to figure out how to add weight to something that has a big tube instead of a nosecone

I took a couple of lead egg sinkers, flattened them and glued them on the inside of the nose and checked that I could insert the air intake without any collision. Checked the balance and I think that it will work now. Pheww!

So, while my heartrate where trying to recover I cleared the gunport with a pin vice and a 0.5mm drill.

3 down 1 to go....

After that I shifted my attention to the wheels and undercarriage. It's not looking super, to be honest....

The photoetch will improve some details but the the wheels will need som tender love and care.... Did a quick check if there are any resin parts available, but I couldn't find any from my regular sources.

The wheels are supposed to look like this:

But that's tomorrows adventure, good night!

Post by **TommyKillander** » Tue May 19, 2015 9:46 pm

Hey guys,

Not much Tunnan action this week sofar... tons of work and other stuff I need to do.

However, I have managed to clean up the undercarriage and I have added some PE details.

I have also started to work on the exhaust, but I'm not 100% happy with it yet. I have painted it with Alclad2 "Burnt Pale Metal" and "Jet Exhaust" sofar.

Cheers

Post by **Homerlovesbeer** » Wed May 20, 2015 2:57 am

Are you going to fix the tread on the tyres? If so how?

Post by **TommyKillander** » Wed May 20, 2015 7:21 am

Homerlovesbeer wrote:Are you going to fix the tread on the tyres? If so how?

The shape of the main wheels are all wrong, but its too much work trying to fix that.

But I will try paint the grooves with black color and use a dark grey color for the rest of the tyre, will make a test later this week to see if I can get it to work

Cheers

Post by **martin57** » Wed May 20, 2015 8:13 pm

looking good , nice save with the tail sitting problem

Post by **TommyKillander** » Wed May 20, 2015 9:20 pm

Hey,

Been working on other small parts in the kit. I guess that I'm procrastinating the filling/sanding/rescribing effort

Anyway, the area behind the ejection seat looks like this.

To make something that looks atleast a little like this I need to adjust the rounded wedge-shaped plastic part and a PE "beam" to fit togheter:

The final placement will be something like this (open canopy):

Cheers!

Post by **Nige201980** » Fri May 22, 2015 7:58 am

Looking great mate even with the few issues