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
