The White Lily - Brengun 1/72 Yak-1

[Parrahs]

So I thought I'd get something Russian onto the piston fighter shelf. As I have a thing for vehicles that can be linked to specific events and/or people I pretty much started with deciding on an aircraft flown by Lydia Litvjak, one of history's two female fighter aces and the first female fighter pilot to shoot down an enemy aircraft. This then set the path, she flew Yak-1 and Yak-1B so that decided the aircraft, and looking around for kit and decals the reasonable option I found (ie not involving, say, Mistercraft or so) ended up being a Yak-1, red 32 in winter colours. Which I guess fits nicely with how USSR press releases called her the "White Lily of Stalingrad".

 

As for the specific kit I ended up with Brengun's 1/72 Yak-1 1942 as that seemed like it might be reviewing a bit better than A-model. Seems pretty nice, I get a "short run kit that cares" feeling from it. So locating tabs will be an DIY affair, but a pretty good amount of details (surface and separate parts), with some PE and a few resin bits included where the plastic wouldn't cut it. Flash exists, especially around the wings. Which I guess is somewhat understandable, those rear edges are very thin, so they were probably pushing their process to the very limit there.

 

 

Getting started on the cockpit, a number of the parts are decidedly delicate, an impression that's further reinforced (while the kit itself is the opposite) by a few small bits of the kit thin and soft PE serving as structural parts here and there.

 

 

Fit seems decent so far, and some rough test fitting of the fuselage halves suggest that they do consider themselves to be form the same aircraft at least. It's going to be a lot of bits to sandwich in between them though, that may end up being a five arm job.

[Sturmovik]

I'll be following this thread, one of my aircraft to get is Litvyak's Yak 1B.

[Andwil]

Definitely got my attention so I’ll follow along too.

 

AW

[06/24]

Familiar with neither aircraft nor pilot, I'm in

[neil5208]

An unusal one, I'7ll watch with intrest

[John Masters]

Looks to be a fine build.  I'll follow this one please!

[Parrahs]

Seems I attracted a crowd of encouraging size and disposition here.

 

Cockpit internals painted up. Drybrushing may have gotten rather harsh, but to be seen through a 1/72 canopy that may be the better side to lean towards.

 

 

The various bits where then glued to the inside of the fuselage, and the fuselage halves where stuck together.

 

 

I skipped gluing the very front end at this stage to have a bit less that needed lining up all at once. The fuselage fit decently with itself and most of the cockpit, but the frame that the seat is attached to turned out to be a bit too wide resulting in it disassembling itself and the rear piece of cockpit "floor". These all seem pretty easy to stick back in from below as long as the wings haven't been put on though, so no disaster. The front end was then done all in one go with the upper cowling piece, underside pieces of the fuselage were added, and a touch of filling and sanding was applied as necessary.

 

 

[Parrahs]

Moving on to the wings and here things get rather more work intensive. A pretty standard setup with a joint lower piece,  and an insert for each side to give the wheel wells side walls. Those inserts had some rather significant combination of a mould line all around it, with sink ditches on each side. No details or such to worry about though, so that was quickly and brutally dealt with. Some dry fitting then showed that they were rather too high to allow the wings halves to join up properly, so more sanding. And finally they had odd ideas about how to fit into the slots in the upper and lower wings, resulting in the wing parts being misaligned, so more sanding there. Eventually it all fell into place though, and some paint was added since the fragmentary floor of the cockpit might leave it somewhat visible.

 

 

Now then, let's see how this fits the fuselage.

 

 

It seems someone though the pilot might need some stairs to get into the cockpit. Luckily with the wings un-attached the bit extending out form the fuselage was to get to with a sanding stick, and so the step was taken down to something more of a slide. Wee!

Then I simply plodded along until only the landing gear remains to be assembled. The major issue here was that the canopy pieces all together were a bit longer than the space they were to fit into. I didn't quite manage to keep things straight and perpendicular there, so let's hope the Montex masks (well behaved overall so far) managed to keep the Mr Surfacer used as filler there in check.

 

 

Somewhat uncommon use of PE underneath. We also see the belly air intake, which ended up being the only part here needing something chunkier than Mr Surfacer for filling, and I think a bit more test fitting and sanding of the insert there could have gotten rid of that. Both the belly and front air intake shave resin grilles inside them.

 

[Brandy]

Nice progress. Are those drawings accurate? If they are, I'd be little worried about the shape of the lower rudder, which shows the widest part towards the bottom.

 

Ian

[Parrahs]

1 hour ago, limeypilot said:

Nice progress. Are those drawings accurate? If they are, I'd be little worried about the shape of the lower rudder, which shows the widest part towards the bottom.

 

Ian

The drawings are simply the painting guide from the after-market decals I got, I have no idea which is the more accurate of it and the kit itself (or if it varied).

[AdrianMF]

Coming along nicely! It looks like this kit is a proper "short run" and needs a little more care and attention than the norm. 

 

Regards,

Adrian

[Parrahs]

Not a terrible lot going on with the paint scheme and all of eight transfers grand total (not a single stencil to be found between the kit decals and my after-market ones) so progress here was rather like a P-47 in a dive. I tried to work in some slight variation in the paint, probably leaning a bit much towards the subtle side with it. I didn't quite get the toy feeling form it on the other hand though, so perhaps it's quite enough for the unobstructed eye. The carpet monster got a few of the exhaust pipes though, and new ones were made with stretched sprue.

 

 

This AMT-7 stuff is a rather neat hue. Both it and the white are Mr Paint, impossible to work with a brush but my current favourite for the airbrush. Just make sure the primer coat is solid, the solvent they use is very much on the hot side.

 

 

The Balkan models decals behave quite well. Slightly fragile in return for being quite thin. Activated quickly.

 

And then all that was left was mostly to make it look like there was a war going on. I'm usually somewhat sparse with the weathering, but with the white background things ended up somewhat harsh in appearance. Then again, I guess that'd be the case in reality too, so I'll take it with a shrug.

 

 

And with that I'm finished. More photos for those so inclined can be found in what I assume is the expected place. Thanks for your support all.