AZ Models have announced the release of the distinctive Swedish fighter SAAB J-29 Tunnan. The Tunnan has been listed on their website for some time now and it''s great news to see it finally released. AZ Models have also released images of the new 1/48 kit injected plastic kit with resin parts on their website. It will be released as two separate kits, one with Swedish markings and the other with Austrian markings.

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If you have comments or questions please post them here.

Thanks!

Do yuo actually mean that they bring two boxes onto the market with as only diffference the decal sheets?

Nice.
I think the different decals is nothing new from Az.

Those are Austrian markings not Danish.

Yes,i just notice it too. Pretty obvious,says on the instruction sheet too.

Ooops sorry folks Well spotted plastic junkie.
All the best.
tim

The shape around the nose and canopy is very strange. I have seen that AZ is trying to correct the nose witha a new resinpart, how they are going to fix the canopy i don't know. To me AZ has missed the target but I will bay it any way and see if I can fix the errors

Nicklas Karlén, IPMS Sweden

You are right, the nose in the pictures of he model looks very different from what pictures of he real airplane show.

But maybe, consiering that it is resin, this can be easily corrected by AZ. If not, I wonder how easy it would be to correct it.

Nevertheless an interesting new kit

Yes. Wondering if they can fix it. The Neomega kit is too expensive and all resin

I think it is supposed to be released in Nov.

Unfortunately, it seems that AZ has blown this chance of giving us a basic but accurate Tunnan, way beyond what a resin update could fix.

The nose and canopy problems have been mentioned already. I haven't got the kit in my hand, but with that caveat it's obvious from the sprue shots (image #4 for example) that the tail cone is wrong, being much too squeezed underneath. The fairing between the afterburner cowling and the tailcone should have roughly parallel edges – not narrow toward the end as in the kit.

Also, there are big question marks regarding the Swedish kit decals.

The markings profile sheet (image #7) shows three J29 E:s. But the 'E' was a different aircraft from the 'F'! While the E did use the new wing with the sawtooth, it still had the original, non-afterburning engine. The F model got the afterburner and so, the aft lower fuselage looks very different.

In other words, in order to build an accurately marked F from the AZ kit, you have to get third party decals.

All in all, a big disappointment, apparently brought about by sloppy research and indifferent kit tooling.

/Joachim

That is a shame. Was looking forward to this kit....

Just read in Scale Aviation Modeller's latest edition that the kit will come out any day now....

However, they say that the two decal versions are Swedish and Danish Thats gotta be a mistake.....

Long time no see, everybody. I just picked this up from the shop of a small air wing museum here in Sweden. I haven't looked it over in detail, but I'd say by a first glance it will look like a J 29 to most of us.

The decal sheets are for Swedish J 29's and Austrian ones. The danish AF has a red ring with a white dot in the middle, in stead of the austrian triangle.

I aim for a Kongo recon maching though. The fighters were B-versions, without the sawtooth wing, but the two recon crates had that wing AiND were repainted in the Kongo-camo. I will have to remove the cannon ports and putty up some bulbs around the front gears, but that seems fairly straight forward.

Regarding the kit in itself, it's quite basic. Nicely riveted but not overdone, no locating pins whatsoever, which will call for bracing struts through the body and out into the wings, but with a magnifying glass the cockpit might be nice. The mould is too dark though, so it's hard to see the detail before priming.

I'm moving in a few weeks, and can get a workplace up after a three year standstill, so I hope to see you around again soon.

So, its out?

I'm not sure about retailers, but the airwingmuseum at the old F10 fighter base had a batch. They might have made a deal though, since they flew Tunnan for quite a while.

Great to see you online again Tony, I'm looking forward to seeing your build of this little gem mate !

Cheers, D

Well, gem might be an overstatement, but I have hopes for it. I also heard something about a 1:48 SAAB 32 Lansen too, but it seems to have hidden in the shadows. I'm not really into jets, but these old designs are just so cook.

http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i300/rrlillen/S29VitBertiliKongo.jpg

This is what will become of the J 29 though. A recon version from the Congo conflict -61-64. The white "Adam" and "Bertil" had the sawtooth wing, so they can be built with the congo-camo. It calls for some modifications, camera blisters and the little aerial in the intake, but I hope a can get through that. Got new glasses now mate!

Thanks Tony. You gave me new confidence that this kit will be worth it.

Hopefully it will be out soon.

I will bring my camera in a while and go by the museum of the local (dismantled) air wing to fill a memory card with the Tunnan. I have no idea where to put the pics up around here, but I guess that can be arranged some way. Hopefully I can find a J 32 Lansen too, and do the same with that later on.

Send them to me and I'll assemble them into a walkaround feature for you : )

Super Jessie. Will do that. I'll just have to make myself known at the museum so I can get close enough for the details.

That's great. Can you make them 800 X 600 (or thereabouts) so they can fit into our feature format please? Also, anything you care to write about the museum and/or the subject would be terriffic.

Wow! I see its out. Kinda pricy at 60 USD....

Does anybody know how it looks? Was the nose shape corrected?

Mike, in my box the front part of the nose is a resin part, and (or course) it's casting block is connected at the tip. I'm taking a trip to the 10th fighter wing museum saturday, and then I'll upload all pics, including the kit to Jessie for making a walkaround section. However, you can see one AZ and one Neomega at IPMS Stockholm through the links below.

Neomega by Johan Elvin

AZ by Rickard Andersson

There are issues with both kit, as both builders say, but still - with my eyes they are neither Sabres nor Mig 15's.