Alpha Jet 'Oldenburger Kolibri' 25yrs JaBo G.43
1/72 Fujimi kit (reboxed by Revell Germany, cat.nr. 4334)

Introduction

Back in the 80ies a lot of German Luftwaffe and Marineflieger squadrons celebrated their anniversaries by painting one of their aircraft in bright colors. In Germany these brightly colored birds are called "Kolibri's". The results varied from downright awful to quite pretty looking with even some true works of art.

Advanced Strike Training Squadron JaBo G.43, based at Oldenburg, celebrated its 25th anniversary in 1984 by painting one of their Alpha Jets (Werke nr. 0044, 40+44) in a very attractive scheme. When I saw an in-flight picture of this vividly painted Alpha Jet in the German aviation magazine Flug Revue (nr.12/1985), I knew I just had to do an Alpha Jet model in that very color scheme.
An additional picture can be found in the book 'Fighter Meet' by C.J. van Gent (Airlife Publ. ISBN 1-85310-198-2). I copied this picture here.

A brief description of this JaBo G.43 color scheme with some color pictures and a useful set of 1/72nd scale drawings can be found in the German magazine Modell Fan nr.5/1986. These drawings also contain details and dimensions of the special emblems painted on belly and tailfin and of most of the service markings.

Construction

I started off with a Revell Germany rebox (kit nr.4334) of Fujimi's Alpha Jet. The Fujimi Alpha Jet kit has some weird flaws, but it comes with a beautiful set of decals that is also included in this Revell release. I ended up using only the service markings of the decal set.
Major flaws in the kit are:

• right wing-fuselage join 2mm out of lateral alignment;
  
• fuselage nose shape too blunt;
  
• belly of center fuselage lacks concave shape;
  
• rear of engine pods too short, too wide and lacking toe-out for exhaust pipes;
  
• diameter of exhaust pipes too large;
  
• tip of vertical fin too straight;
  
• landing lights in the wing leading edges (as the prototypes had, the lights should be fitted above the 'knees' of the main landing gear for a production version);
  
• canopy fits poorly.
  

Another thing to keep in mind is that in most Alpha Jet kits, including this one, the wing pylons come molded together with the flap guides. If you don't want to fit the pylons, be sure to cut the triangular flap guides off of the rear end of each pylon and fit the guides to the wings.

The gun pod covers up most of the missing concave shape of the center fuselage so I only corrected the part forward of the pod.


During final assembly I noticed that the main landing gear legs were not strong enough to hold the weight of the aircraft, causing the legs to bend and the wheels to pick up a lot of negative camber (the wheels should be nearly vertical) but it was too late to do anything about that. This may have contributed to the 4mm by which I had to shorten the nose leg to get the model to sit right.

Small Details

• Replaced pitot tube with the tip of a cloth pin.
  
• Replaced small antennae on the top and bottom of the nose with new ones from flattened copper wire.
  
• Used thin metal wire to add a pitot tube to the lower righthand side of the nose and a small probe to the lefthand side of the nose.
  
• Added a Head Up Display to the coaming over the forward instrument panel and a checklist to the left side of the coaming.
  
• Added seat belts from tissue paper to the seat.
  
• Added ejector handles to the seat made out of copper wire, painted yellow with black stripes.
  
• Removed rear seat, added empty seat rails.
  
• Shortened nose landing gear leg by almost 4mm to achieve a proper 'sit'.
  
• Made new landing lights out of tapered ends of sprue, drilled out and filled with some Kristal Kleer and added those to main landing gear legs.
  
• Added brake lines out of copper wire to main landing gear legs, applied tiny strips of aluminum foil as fasteners.
  
• Drilled a hole through the gun muzzle.
  
• Added air scoop behind starboard wing root.
  
• Anti Collision beacon was added just in front of the fin, made out of a blob of Kristal Kleer, painted with Tamiya X-27 Clear Red.
  
• Added clear light to tail tip, again made from a blob of Kristal Kleer.
  
• Replaced the thin rear section of the arrestor hook with a new one made from Slaters rod.
  
• Painted wing tip navigation lights with transparent blue and red paint (works great over gray plastic).
  
• Added Remove Before Flight tags cut from a red aluminum foil wrapper of a chocolate easter egg.
  

Painting and Decals

After fixing all the flaws, I sprayed on a base coat of Tamiya Acrylic flat white and mixed the blue (RAL 5012) out of Polly-S PF30 and PF31. The other colors used for the wings and tail planes were also by Polly-S with Revell 46 NATO Olive (RAL 7013) for the upper halves of the drop tanks.
The armoured center section of the windshield was painted clear blue using an old unstirred bottle of Pactra X-13 Metallic Blue enamel, taking care not to pick up any metallic particles on the brush. After that the same paint was stirred properly and used to paint the body of the ejection seat.
The landing gear was painted with Humbrol 56 Aluminum with Humbrol 11 Silver details and the gun barrel with Pactra enamel XF-56 Gun Metal.

In the meantime, Heller released their Alpha Jet kit with a set of decals for this very aircraft, thereby solving my problem of finding the one-off emblems for lower fuselage and tailfin.
The twist with the aircraft as depicted here is that it was used on ground attack training missions whilst wearing this scheme, hence the olive green drop tanks and the gun pod. The drop tanks have the lower halves painted blue instead of the usual gray and the gun pod is blue overall.
The triangular flap guides are painted black (inboard guides) or red (outboard guides) whilst the wing pylons are blue overall.

If you want to do an Alpha Jet in this color scheme too, save yourself a lot of work and find the Heller kit (cat. nr. 80205) but beware: the red and black color patches on the decals for the lower wings (nrs 10 and 11) have been reversed !
The Heller painting guide (which was based on the Modell Fan drawings) shows the colors right, but you have to paint the red and black patches yourself to get the scheme right.

Date finished: May 4, 1993.

References

• Flug Revue nr.12/1985, in-flight color picture of 40+44 with gun pod and wing tanks fitted.
  
• Flug Revue various issues, detail pictures of Luftwaffe Alpha Jets.
  
• Modell Fan nr.5/1986, pictures, scale drawings and detailed schematics for "25yrs JaBo G.43" color scheme.
  
• 'Fighter Meet' by C.J. van Gent, Airlife Publ. ISBN 1-85310-198-2, one color picture.
  
• Website of Traditionsgemeinschaft JABO 43 at http://www.fliegerhorst-oldenburg.de/.
  
• Meindert de Vreeze discusses all 1/72 scale Alpha Jet kits and provides build reports on a number of kits.