A friend of mine got me interested in Swedish aviation a few years ago. It started with a Matchbox Viggen, and I'm slowly adding to the collection all the time. This time I found a really cool fighter from a company I'd never heard of before.
The J-22 was the result of Sweden being cut off from the Allies during WWII. They needed aircraft and they weren't coming anytime soon. So they decided to build their own aircraft the J-22 fighter. Its was mostly a tubular frame covered in wood and actually fared pretty well amongst other aircraft at the time.
Several examples still survive today, one is able to taxi on the runway. Personally I think it's a beautiful shape and frame. I found it on ebay and showed it to my friend hoping I'd found him a unique piece for his collection. turns out he already had 2 ha ha. I looked at the pictures a bit, and started to really like the kit, so I bought it, and I'm glad I did.
I'd never heard of Marivox models before. They are a Swedish company who specialize in Swedish aviation, looking through their website, more less common aircraft. Which is great!
The kit comes in light grey plastic, it features recessed panel lines, that unfortunatly on my kit were all blended in. However I was up for a little scribing practice. Some pieces also had a rough texture to them. This was easily fixed with some 1000 grit sand paper, a few passes and nice and smooth.
There is also a fret of etched metal. It contains parts for the interior and exterior. I left the interior parts off my model since I wasn't going to pose the cockpit opened.
Lastly a beautiful decal sheet for 5 options. And they are all great options in my opinion. They are printed by Techmod, and were in perfect register, some of the nicest decals I had ever seen.
The long process of rescribing the kit. Thankfully there is an excellent stencil sheet (Pictured behind the plastic) This was the prefect tool to match the lines up.
It's not a control column, it's actually Thor's mighty
hammer Mjolnir!
Really coming together nicely.
A small bit of sanding on the headrest.
Need to sand down and correct the profile on the tail.
Perfect.
Masking the canopy.
Adding details to the top, including etched
radio antenna.
More etched parts, scissors, and gear doors.
And individual cowl flaps.
I wanted to try a different route with the painting. I began by painting all the panel lines (or rivet lines as seen on the underside wings) a medium brown. I then painted Tamiya XF-21 Sky in between the brown lines. The real J-22 underside looks nearly identical to Tamiya XF-12 J.N Grey. So I lightly painted that on last and blended all the colors together. Not too sure where my head was but I should have used XF-23 Sky Blue instead of the XF-21 Sky, would have got the blueish tint that Swedish aircraft have. But hey at least I know now so I prepare for that in the future.
All blended together.
For the upper surface I started the same, painting the brown on the panel lines. I had noticed on vintage wooden aircraft a brownish patina that develops with age. I thought this might be a fun thing to try and replicate. A bit hard to pull off properly at 72nd scale but a unique challenge either way.
The next color was the Green and Tamiya's XF-81 Dark Green RAF, was once again nearly identical to the pictures I had been studying. I painted inside the browned areas, and then blended the green over the existing green and brown, really pleased with the end result here.
Lastly, and difficult to photograph, I added XF-4 Yellow Green to my RAF Green paint. And painted on simulated highlights on the front top of the wings, and the top of the fuselage. It was just a quick experiment and I think it came out quite well.
The decals were the only thing about the kit I didn't like. They were thin and extremely fragile. I was lucky to get them on. I nearly lost my ind in the process. Thankfully I only lost 2 white stencils, and sadly the right wing marker, as you can see the left on is damaged but intact. I was hoping these Techmod decals would live up to their beauty, but in the end they were the biggest pain. I was thrilled to finally be done, and I covered then in several layer of Future polish.
I was really happy with how this one turned out, even with my little painting experiments. The kit is quite nice to build, nothing too fussy, and pretty straight forward. Again the only thing was the miserable decals, but that's Techmods problem. Hopefully I'll find another of these for a good price soon cause I can't wait to build another one. Thanks for reading along.
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