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JAS-39 Gripen Owners/Build Thread

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JAS-39 Gripen Owners/Build Thread

Old 04-19-2015, 03:36 AM
  #1251  
Art ARRO
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Jim,
Much improved takeoff. You may wish to "con" the flight judges that leap is typical of the Gripen; ie, high performance 3-4 generation fighter jet. On the tank drop you might want to shim a bit of negative incidence on the tank pylon to assist the separation. Otherwise, looking very good. Best of everything at TG.
Rgds,
Art
Old 04-19-2015, 08:16 AM
  #1252  
yeahbaby
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Or add a small spring forward of the tank CG to help push It away as the latch is released.
Old 04-20-2015, 05:05 PM
  #1253  
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Hi - enjoyed seeing you fly at the field today!
Old 04-22-2015, 08:16 PM
  #1254  
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OK so after long winter I did some work on my gripen new lending gear and some work with the gear doors .The lending gear it's far from scale but I hope that will work fine I might change the wheels to 4" later for now I will use 3.5".
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Old 04-22-2015, 08:27 PM
  #1255  
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Jim,

What a wonderful build thread you have created. The bird looks stunning. You deserve a huge amount of praise for sharing your building experience with others online. Most people (like me lol) wouldn't take the time to do this. You are truely a great asset to the modeling community. Thanks for everything you do.

Andy
Old 04-23-2015, 06:58 AM
  #1256  
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Yes Jim is the man and big inspired .
Old 04-23-2015, 02:40 PM
  #1257  
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Thanks guys for the comments. This build thread has been a lot of work, but hopefully it will make things easier for the next person building a Gripen by putting a lot of reference material and data in one place.

I've been busy getting the plane as ready as possible for Top Gun but here's a bit of a write up on what I've been doing

Preparation and Paint – Normally it takes me a month to paint a plane with the vast majority of this time spent in surface preparation of sanding, priming, re-sanding. With Top Gun fast approaching, I painted this plane in only a week. While the overall look is good from typical viewing range, upon close inspection you can see a variety of blemishes and scratches that need to be addressed, if only I had the time. All in all, I’m not too thrilled with my paint job (it certainly isn’t my best work) so I’ve decided to strip the paint after Top Gun and spend the necessary time to repaint it for the JWM.

To facilitate stripping off the paint, I decided not to clear coat the plane. This creates its own set of issues, primarily the protection of the dry transfers and locking in the weathering.

Markings – The paint masks and dry transfers were provided by Tailor Made Decals as part of their sponsorship of Jet Team USA (many thanks Ralle). I drew the markings in Corel Draw from dimension drawings provided by SAAB. The font used on the lettering is Sispos, which is a font designed for Swedish highway signs. I obtained a scan of the alphabet/numbers in Sispos and redrew every letter in CorelDraw, then assembled the letters into the words used in the markings, and then drew the markings from the SAAB drawings. Tailor Made used my CorelDraw file to then make the paint masks and dry transfers which are gorgeous and “dead on balls accurate”.

The national insignia, and large letters/numbers (eg 9245, DANGER, NO STEP, etc) were done with paint mask. Upper markings are FS36076 and lower markings are FS36173. The exception to this is the DANGER and chevron which are a blend of three parts of 36173 and two parts of 36076.

Regards,

Jim
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Old 04-23-2015, 03:37 PM
  #1258  
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Scale Details

After all the work I did in re-engineering and building the model, I found it was a lot of fun to try to add as many accurate scale details as possible. I'm sure that I'll be adding more details, but here's what I've got so far:

Emergency Engine Shut Down – The Gripen has an engine external emergency shut off feature on the right aft upper fuselage. You literally break the glass, and pull the wire loop. I made the recess from styrene tubing/sheet, added safety wire, a clear cover from the screen packaging, and painted it all to match the reference photos.


Gearbox Exhaust – This is another prominent feature on the upper fuselage. Short lengths of brass tubing were installed through the fuselage and painted silver. Red RTV was used to mold the rubber area between the tubes and the surrounding bracket.


APU Exhaust Burns – The APU rear door features paint discoloration/burn from the APU exhaust. The burn pattern seems different on each Gripen (like a fingerprint) but fortunately I had high enough resolution pics of 9245 that I could get a good idea of its pattern. It was a bit of a challenge to reproduce it with an airbrush, but I think I got it pretty close – sorry the pic isn’t better.



Exhaust Nozzle – The kit’s one-piece exhaust as filed to show the gaps between individual pedals. I then airbrushed the nozzle to reproduce the color, shading, and patterns of the full scale nozzle. I’m no airbrush artist, but hopefully it looks pretty good.


Belly Details – the last of the belly details (at least the last details installed before Top Gun) were adding bits of screen to two holes in the aft lower fuselage. Obviously, some weathering is required to show the rivets,etc.


Formation Lights & Fin Vinyl Covers – I made formation lights from .020” thick G-10 which was painted and installed on the fin in the scale locations. The vinyl covers are installed and then cut out around the lighted panel of the formation light. Any error in either the placement of the light or the vinyl itself would be obvious as the cutout would not match the full scale. As such, I put a lot of effort into this and figure that I have the lights/covers installed to within 1/16”. The trick for installing the vinyl is to liberall spray the back of the vinyl with Windex so that it won’t stick and can be moved around and exactly positioned. Once positioning is correct, simply hold the vinyl in place and use a squeegee to squeeze the Windex out from under the vinyl.


Fuselage-mounted Lights – Another division of my company makes the lights for the Gripen and I have assembly level drawings of the lights. I also have a variety of close up photos of the lights and I knocked myself out to get them as scale as I could.


The taxi and landing light are made by Grimes (now Honeywell) so while I didn’t have the same personal affiliation with these lights, I still wanted a high level of accuracy. The clear panel over the circular cutout in the nose gear door was cut to shape from the plastic packaging of a screen repair kit (which was needed for scale details on the belly) and glued to the nose door and painted. After the photo below was taken, I noticed the shape of the cover wasn’t quite right so a bit of rework is planned.

.
The landing lights are mounted to the main gear struts with an octagonal-shaped bracket. The brackets for the model were made from G-10, styrene angles, and brass tubing. The wires from the light were routed through heat shrink tubing and a .125” brass tube glued to the light bracket per the full-scale.


I’m hoping the lights look great on final approach; I guess we’ll find out next Friday after static judging.

Regards,

Jim
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Old 04-23-2015, 04:54 PM
  #1259  
George
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Jim,

Great stuff!!!! I'm sure you're static will be very good!

Good luck at TG!
Old 04-23-2015, 05:04 PM
  #1260  
sysiek
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Jim you should change the screen name from rcjets_63 to gripen guru the gripen looks greate and will look much beter after weathering and all the magic you going to do .

Last edited by sysiek; 04-24-2015 at 07:13 AM.
Old 04-24-2015, 01:40 PM
  #1261  
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Thanks guys. I really am looking forward to having the plane static judged at Top Gun. The Top Gun judges are excellent and I am most interested in their feedback about what they see, any discrepancies, and their suggestions. I'll use this info to make the plane even better for the Jet World Masters in August.

The plane gets packed tonight for it's trip to Florida. Last night I did some final preparation and added a few more scale details including the GPS sensor behind the cockpit, the formation lights at the front of the plane, and the aft exhaust outlet. All that remains are some details on the wingtip missile rails which I'll do this weekend (and hand carry the rails on my flight to FL) and painting the cannon and some undernose details (which I'll do in the tent at the event).


I'm really pleased about how well the canard and fin vinyls look. Bob Belluomini did a excellent print job. Give him a call if you have printing needs. Below is a comparison of the model and the full scale. I have circled in red a variety of comparison reference points (such how as the bottom edge of the rudder middle hinge is just above the highlight claw bone). I'd say that's a 10....fingers crossed ;-)


Finally, thank you to everybody for their kind wishes. My goals for Top Gun are simple: Put in a respectable showing, don't finish last, bring the plane home in one piece, and have fun. My best wishes to all Top Gun competitors and all R/C jet enthusiasts everywhere.

Regards,

Jim
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Old 04-24-2015, 02:12 PM
  #1262  
Art ARRO
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Jim,
Wishing you the best of everything at TG.
Rgds,
Art ARRO
Old 04-24-2015, 05:54 PM
  #1263  
sysiek
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OK so today I did the gear doors cylinders fittings .will test them tomorrow.
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Old 04-25-2015, 03:54 PM
  #1264  
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_b0UqetPis So I did the gear and gear doors to work today next will be the electric setup.

Last edited by sysiek; 04-25-2015 at 04:37 PM.
Old 04-25-2015, 04:42 PM
  #1265  
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Sebastien,

Nicely done. Since you used an adjustable Robart valve on the gear doors, close down the needle valves a bit to slow down the door movement so they don't slap open/closed.

J
Old 04-25-2015, 05:00 PM
  #1266  
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Yes that one was installed to regulate the air flow to gear doors and I did some adjustments but the main gear doors still close with force after the pressure builds up in the lines so I just did little slower to open and that's it ,the most important for now it's to make it work all the time I hope.

Last edited by sysiek; 04-25-2015 at 07:35 PM.
Old 04-26-2015, 04:19 PM
  #1267  
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Okay so today I was working on the steering pull pull system .looks like it will work I did add some plastic tubing to keep the cables away from the wheels .
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Old 04-26-2015, 10:19 PM
  #1268  
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With my AW Gripen in a trailer over a thousand miles away on it's way to Lakeland, FL, I have been doing two things:
1) catching up on some much sleep
2) making some additional scale details

I built/painted lthe AOA & yaw vanes that mount on the sides and bottom of the nose, the white disc shaped EW sensor on the fin fairing (below the strobe), the temperature probe under the left canard, the IFF antennas on the aircraft spine, the airfoil shaped vent for the aft belly, the teardrop shaped FAU under the nose, the inboard and middle reinforcement fairings for the aileron hinges, and the pitot tubes. These parts will all be glued in place at the event.


I also whipped up some decals for the ejection seat and wheels and printed them on clear adhesive backed sheets. I forgot to measure the size needed while the plane was still here so I printed the seat decals in various scales and will choose the best one at the event. I did have the 3D printed prototype rims so I was able to get the needed size of the rim decals.


Regards,

Jim
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Old 04-27-2015, 07:35 AM
  #1269  
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Jim, best of luck to you this weekend!
Old 04-27-2015, 07:44 AM
  #1270  
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Jim
Best of luck for Top Gun. I am sure you will make everybody who follow the thread proud.
Pierre
Old 04-27-2015, 07:04 PM
  #1271  
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Thanks everybody for wishing me luck. I'll post the Gripen results at Top Gun.

Here's a fun photo, I gathered up the photos of the full scale Gripen that I printed/used during the construction of the model. The stack is 2-3/4" high.

I'm afraid to stack up the invoices (let alone total them) for fear that the pile might be just as high.

Regards,

Jim
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Old 04-27-2015, 09:11 PM
  #1272  
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Go get 'em Jim! No doubt this bird will impress.

And I agree with Andy, you are an Asset to the RC Jet community.

...and the margaritas are just bonus so I can tolerate you outsmarting me during kick-the-tire jet conversations at field hangout nights during meets!

Shaz
Old 04-27-2015, 11:41 PM
  #1273  
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Jim all the best.

marcs
Old 04-30-2015, 04:34 AM
  #1274  
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Greetings from Top Gun,

It was a busy day yesterday with assembling the Gripen, painting some features (the gun and touch ups) and gluing on the scale details I made this past weekend. It was a thrill to get the plane finished (for now) and be able to stand back and see it all.

I was honored to have ace photographer take some pics of the plane including one of his signature sunset shots. David does awesome work!

Today will be some final prep for static judging tomorrow and maybe even a bit of socializing.

Regards,

Jim
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Old 04-30-2015, 04:57 AM
  #1275  
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Super nice picture ,go Jim

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