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Smer Yak-3 in 1/72 (Pic Heavy)


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Hi all,

I originally meant my next WIP to be an IL-2, but changed my mind after I seen a Yak-3 online that I liked the look of and wanted to make. This will be my first kit with aftermarket parts; currently only the decals, but I'm looking into some metal exhausts (with no luck so far). I'll be building a small diorama as well, with Zvezda's Soviet Air Force Ground Crew.

I'll be building Lt.Col. A.D. Yakimenko's plane. "Yakimenko entered combat against the Japanese over Khalkhin Gol in summer 1939 [and] was given credit for 3 individual and 4 shared victories. Yakimenko met the requirements for the award of the title of HSU for his outstanding performance in Mongolia on August the 29th, 1939. During his GPW career, he flew 244 combat sorties, reaching 15 individual kills and 29 aerial encounters. His exploits won him the Order of Lenin, the Red Banner, Suvorov 3rd Class, the Patriotic War 1st Class, the Red Star and various medals."

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At first glance it seems like a nice kit, if quite simple, consisting of only 34 parts across 4 sprues.

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The decals I've got are from AML and seem quite nice.

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My only complaint is slightly petty, and it's that the small red rectangles (16) are meant to go on top of the medal shapes (15), rather than just being made as one in the first place. For scale, the squares on the background are 1cmx1cm.

Finally, Zvezda's Soviet Air Force Ground Crew.

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Although not having as many figures as Airfix's ground crews, the Zvezda kit still seems quite nice.

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Also unlike Airfix, some of the people come in multiple parts. The parts seem very easy to fit together though, and it allows me to paint areas that (if each person came in one piece) may be slightly fiddly to get to.

I should also mention that the kit lacks a pilot, and since I couldn't find a seated pilot online and I haven't posted enough on here to post in the buying and selling section, I've instead taken a spare pilot from the RAF ground crew I used in a previous build and, despite not being correct, will be using that in place of it. I could try to make some adjustments to it, though.

I'll be starting the build soon.

Thanks for looking,

Corbin. ^_^

Edited by DreadZombie
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Hi all,

Made a decent start today, I think. I've got most of the construction of the plane completed and am quite happy with it so far.

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Slightly bad photo of the pilot in the cockpit, took it slightly early as I tidied some of the painting on the pilot not long afterwards.

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Really like the raised detail of in the cockpit, tried to use a recently bought metallic pen to add some chrome rings to them and seems to have worked quite well from this photo (it seems more obvious in this than to the naked eye, but that could just be me).

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Cockpit glues nicely to the top of the wings, even though it doesn't clip into anything it fits really well and barely needs holding in place. After a dry assembly of the fuselage halves to the top of the wings with this, I realised that the pilots arms were too wide to fit and they needed to be removed. Which was probably to be as expected, as the pilot was never meant to fit in a cockpit.

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I needed to swap my poly-cement for super glue to stick the wings to the fuselage, as they kept separating from each other no matter how long I seemed to hold it there.

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Finally, got the canopy masked. I decided to try using Tamiya's masking tape instead of Humbrol's Maskol. I find Maskol needs a much steadier hand than masking tape. :P

Thanks for looking,

Corbin. ^_^

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Hi all,

Finished the construction of the Yak today, along with the painting and the decals. I'll have the base cut out tomorrow, hopefully, and then may also have made a good start on the base as well.

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Started off this morning by finishing off the wheels and the wheel bays, and the air intake. Pretty fiddly but got there in the end.

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Glued in the masked canopy using Clearfix, painted the nose and masked it. I then stuck a layer of paint on the top ready for some Maskol before I apply the second colour.

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Added the Maskol in places to cover the one paint, then added the second colour. The Maskol took away some 'flakes' of the paint that has given the darker colour some rough edges in places. It seems to have been slightly exaggerated in some of these pictures. The Tamiya masking tape on the windows has worked really well, despite it bleeding a little onto the red nose (which was corrected easily with a fine brush).

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Painted the underside of the plane and also attached the exhausts (which can't be seen from this angle).

I'd painted the area around the exhausts the red colour and then used a metallic pen on the exhausts themselves.

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After the paint had all dried, I stuck on a layer of Gloss Cote and then added the AML decals using Decalfix.

Onto the base and the figures, next.

Thanks for looking,

Corbin. ^_^

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