Designed by Swedish aerospace company Saab, the S35E Draken is a reconnaissance version of the original fighter Draken. The Draken was manufactured by Saab between 1955 and 1974 it was built to replace the Saab J28 Tunnan and Saab 32 Lansen. However to this date Draken’s have been retired from military service.

There are roughly 117 parts in the kit totaling 9 sprues with very few parts not being used. The decals provided allow you to make your plane either the 11-02 or 11-16 version. Most decals provided are not used (decals 17-35). There is no armament with this kit. The fuselage comes in two halves (top and bottom), they fit together really nicely. The one thing I noticed immediately was the nice panel lines that this kit has. There are only 13 steps to this kit but that’s because two steps have a large amount of pieces to glue on.

“Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, this was their finest hour”. These words, spoken by Winston Churchill on June 18, 1940, braced his island nation for the German aerial onslaught awaiting them just a few short miles across the English Channel. The outcome is, of course, well known as the Royal Air Force repelled the Luftwaffe, but at a terrible cost in lives, mainly from the German bombing campaign that the battle turned into. This same island would become the launching point for the allied bombing raids and the D-day invasion across that same channel four years later. 2015 marks the 75^th anniversary of this epic battle and Airfix has boxed some of the most famous aircraft involved in the battle to commemorate it.

One of the lessons that I’ve learned over my years of modeling is that it is wise to use the tool best suited for the job at hand. I have a number of high quality tools and many of them have the label, “Xuron” on the handle.

My latest acquisition is the Xuron Tk 3600 Photo Etch Took Kit. The Xuron webpage featuring the TK 3600 states that this kit was designed for scale model builders working with delicate photo-etch. Is there any other kind of PE? The kit contains three tools for cutting, bending and holding PE parts.

Model 9180ET Professional Photo-Etch Scissor cuts the PE, Model 450 TweezerNose™ Plier holds the PE, and the Model 575 Micro Bending Plier bends it.

Upon opening the box, one is greeted with a simple resin kit of an aircraft so obscure that even though I pride myself on my knowledge of WWII aircraft and have built over 100 resin kits of many obscure aircraft, again I had to look this one up!

The following brief history was gleaned from Wikipedia:

The latest from Werner’s Wings provides an external auxiliary fuel tank for any 1/48 USMC AH-1W, AH-1Z, UH-1N, or UH-1Y kit. Floyd Werner provides great instructions showing exactly how to assemble the three parts along with color photos of various options for installation. A re-sealable zip lock bag holds the parts and the instructions.

Werner’s Wings has molded the external auxiliary fuel tank in grey resin with only a few minor bubbles. According to his website, the external auxiliary fuel tank is designed to be supplied on a resin sprue, but the kit as received has had the sprue already removed from the tank. The two other parts are supplied on a short resin sprue and will need to be detached with a photo-etch razor saw. I used a #73 drill bit to open up the mounting holes a bit and secured the parts with superglue. The connecting hoses are not supplied and will need to be scratch-built.