RSAF J9 / P-35 1/48 Dora Wings
Dora Wings have done an excellent job capturing the overall shape of this plane, it's light years more accurate than the old Hobby Craft kit. The build is fairly labor intensive and test fitting of parts is a must as with all limited run kits. There are a few things, for some reason, Dora Wings didn't provide in the kit. J9's had head armor and a head rest pad behind the pilots seat and these parts are not in the kit. Also J9's did not have the right wing landing light. Fixing this is easy as all one needs to do is glue in the clear light cover and putty it smooth. As far as the head armor/head rest I made the armor from sheet plastic and the head rest from poster tack putty. These fixes are not hard to do but the instructions have no information about this. I'm fortunate to have good references on the J9 but what about the modeler that hasn't? The other major pain are the photo etched cowl gills. Yes you can get them to fit but it's a lot of work. I hope on future radial engine kits Dora Wings re-thinks this. The kit canopy hood is too thick to be posed properly in the open position. Once again I resorted to my trusty old Mattel vac machine and using the kit hood as a master made a replacement. I also added canopy slide rails between the windscreen and rear canopy to give a more realistic look. The kit pitot tube is undersized so a built one up from plastic strip and rod. The landing light cover was made from cello tape. This kit is a fair amount of work but it does look nice completed and I'm happy with the result.
12 additional images. Click to enlarge.
John Healy said on June 19, 2021
Turned out great, Dale!
George Schembri said on June 19, 2021
Great work on the camouflage, Dale - everything looks great!
Gary Brantley said on June 20, 2021
Fine work Dale! Thanks for showing her to us here! 🙂
George Williams said on June 20, 2021
All your extra work and research has really paid off, definitely liked.
Dan Lee said on June 20, 2021
Excellent paint job. Unique Swedish camo. Sounds like the Dora Wings kit was a bit of a challenge.
Bob Dudolevitch said on June 20, 2021
This is one of the best P-35s evah! Superb work and great capture of the RSAF's Italian-style camo.
Awesome work.
Tom Bebout said on June 20, 2021
Well done Dale, your extra work really shows. Great camo paint job as well.
Spiros Pendedekas said on June 20, 2021
Excellent build, Dale!
Love the Is edish camp, which you represented spotlessly.
Thanks for all the kit info!
John vd Biggelaar said on June 20, 2021
Extremely nice build, Dale.
The additional work you did made it look very realistic.
Great camouflage as well.
I'm still looking for a nice Swedish build and this might be one of them.
Haslam Yeoman said on June 20, 2021
Very sharp build.
Tom Cleaver said on June 20, 2021
As you have so well demonstrated here, @dtravis, it's a kit that takes work, but the result is definitely worth the effort. I like this a lot.
Reinhard Spreitzhofer said on June 20, 2021
Turned out great! Looks definitely better than the old Hobbycraft kit.
I like your camo work.
dale travis said on June 20, 2021
Thanks everyone for the positive comments!
Stellan Schroeder Englund said on June 21, 2021
Good job on that J 9! Love the underside over size crown marks.
When I was a kid the F 8 wing at Barkarby was still used by the RSwAF and we could watch J 35 Draken go down the runway with a mighty roar. The eagle emblem was at the gate to the flying club housing there. Now, the entire area is built up with houses and shopping facilities ...
Greg Kittinger said on June 21, 2021
That looks fantastic! Love the scheme, and the finish work is really nice on this. Well done.
Robert Royes said on June 21, 2021
An impressive build!
Doug Humphrey said on June 24, 2021
Great job! Liked.
Berndt Sonelius said on December 9, 2021
Great job, inspiring!