Yup: 

Your Mojo has definately returned for this project   

You should write a book on the J35

Oh, you just did.   

Another good day! PSR is complete, pilot and seat (one piece!) modified, painted and put in cockpit. Nose and wingtips are filed into shape and most antennae are in place. I've even added the center pylon and its 1200 ltr drop tank.
Weapon pylons, nose pitot and a small air intake on the port side of the spine remain to be fixed, as does the Hughes HN-71 IRST. While having used a Heller part on the short-tailed J35A, I might replace that with a better one, nicked from a Hasegawa kit. Not primarily because I absolutely need the better part, but because I don't have another Heller IRST available. However, neither the Danish nor the Austrian Drakens had them, but they're present on the standard Hasegawa spruces. And obviously, I'll need two, one for each Revell Draken.

Anyway - this is where we are right now:

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Very nice 

The Draken always looks like it's doing M 2.0 even when it's standing still! 

Nice. 

  

Re the two early Drakens I'm building:
As you can see, the main (only) difference between the J35A short and the J35A long is the afterburner, clearly visible as the later model has a significantly extended rear fuselage. The J35B did have a few other changes, but only in electronics, so let's skip past that for now.

Anyhow - the reason to modify the powerplant was that the performance of the original J35A was somewhat disappointing, in particular above 13000 m. Also, the max speed reached was "only" Mach 1.8 where M2.0+ was expected.
The new, longer afterburner did make quite some difference, allowing for the desired M2.0 performance plus a rather sprightlier behaviour up high. This was deemed a resounding success, and there was never any looking back.
The difference in power between these afterburners were actually rather spectacular. Tests confirmed that the combination of more power and less drag meant a difference in thrust equivalent to 11 kN!
On later, heavier marks, an even more powerful engine/afterburner combination, the RM6C/EBK67 was installed (from the J35D and onwards). This was an Avon 300 paired to an EBK66 adapted to the bigger gas generator. This unit put out a whopping 76,3 kN, compared to 72,8 kN from the Avon 301R in a late Lightning!

The difference in output can actually be seen, as the RSwAF historic flight has both a Sk35C, using the smaller Avon and the short afterburner, and a J35J using the final RM6C/EBK67 combination. Look at the difference in size of the flame!





Aaand that was today's nerdery, at your service! 

It LOOKS better with the long tailpipe too, not sure why, but it does.

Quote from: PR19_Kit on March 21, 2025, 06:05:46 AMIt LOOKS better with the long tailpipe too, not sure why, but it does.

Yup, got a sleeker look to her

  

Having sneaked in some modelling time during the most boring of my generally boring meetings today, I managed a final finetuning of the J35B's nose shape and also made and attached the little air intake for the cockpit systems on the spine behind the canopy, I rounded things off by drilling out a hole for my steel needle nose pitot, and gluing it in. That done, the basic airframe is now All but complete, only leaving that IRST for another day - or rather to when I dig one out.
Also, there's pylons and weaponry to do. And then paint and decals, of course. But if anything gets done this weekend, it'll be the pylons, as we've sodded off to the cottage for some badly needed R&R, leaving most modelling stuff behind.
All in all, it's been nice modelling, these Draken projects, and I'm rather pleased with the turnout, so far, both on this and on its slightly older sibling.

In the general search for system data on these aircraft, I came across the some rather amazing pages on the missile museum homepage. There's loads of detailed info in there, and I'd like to show you one example - namely a very thorough run-through of a radio silent ground controlled radar intercept procedure from the first generation Swedish ground based integrated fighter control where the radar fighter controller leads the fighter into position from where a predetermined attack sequence then can be performed, night or day. Fantastic detail, and really interesting to see what they actually could do already 60 years ago.
The link is >HERE<, and while this is a specific Swedish system and procedure, I would imagine the Lightnings of the RAF were led in pretty similar fashion when performing QRA duties back in the day. Enjoy, but please note that this is a Google Translate from the original page, written in Swedish, so there might be the odd peculiarity in the text. F.i, "flotilla" is wing, and "division" squadron. But I hope it's readable nonetheless.

Well, that was comprehensive!