Yak 3, the Special Hobby Hi-Tech Kit

[Dpgsbody55]

Started looking at my next project last night, Special Hobby's Yak 3.  No pics that I can put up yet, but I will have soon.

 

 

Cheers,

Michael

[Dpgsbody55]

So this is what I'm building, and I've added the Eduard interior detail set to the build.  I bought this kit when it first came out and put it away, waiting to see what aftermarket addons came out, which is my usual modus operandii.

 

 

I was going to start this in September, instead of my Meteor T7 build, but when I got it out and had a look, I noticed one of the undercarriage doors was missing.  My first thought was to scratch build one, but then I thought that I'd see how good Special Hobby's support is.  So I sent them an email to which they sent back a link requesting details of what I was missing, and a month or so later, this is what arrived back in the mail.

 

 

Not just the missing door, but  whole lot more instead.   So a big thank you to Special Hobby for their support.  Clearly in this instance, their support is very good. 

 

At the moment, I haven't got much done.  Some of the PE Eduard has been attached to the cockpit floor and side frames,  and the resin rudder pedals supplied in the Hi Tech kit have been glued on, and last night I went mad with the airbrush and painted as much as I could before assembly starts.

 

 

That's it for the moment.  The next installment should be a little more interesting.

 

 

Cheers,

Michael

 

 

Edited December 13, 2019 by Dpgsbody55

[Dany Boy]

One of the best WWII propeller fighter and wonderful model! I will flow this tread  

[dennismcc]

Great to see a Yak being build, a few years ago  built the resin Aeropoxy Yak 3 and was made up with it, when the SH kit came out I had to buy one, so will follow this build and pick up tips.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[Dpgsbody55]

22 hours ago, Dany Boy said:

One of the best WWII propeller fighter and wonderful model! I will flow this tread  

 

 

Agreed.  I think it was one of the best kept secrets and one that deserves some attention from modellers.

 

Cheers,

Michael

[Dpgsbody55]

I've made a little bit of progress over the last week.  The cockpit floor is done, the cockpit is partially complete and I've done a little on the fuselage halves.

 

Here's the right side frame, complete.

 

 

I haven't used all of the Eduard kit, as I think some of the S-H kit parts are more effective.  The red turn taps are Eduard as is the part attached to the frames above the console.  For the turn taps, I sliced the kit part vertically to slim them down, then glues the Eduard taps to the remains.  This makes them stand proud at the right height, and gives something to glue to without shaving them off and using rod which is fiddly.  The handle towards the back of the console is Eduard, but all the levers are kit.

 

Here's the left hand console top, built in a similar fashion to the right console.  Again, I used the kit parts for the levers, including the yellow and white twinned levers.  To create some notion of this lever being two levers, I used black wash down the crease in the part to give the notion of separate parts.

 

 

Next up is the two cockpit frames, together with the front wall and the charging handle, which is the CMK resin part included in this edition of the S-H kit.

 

 

I next glued these together, along with the rear radio tray and A frame, which I slid up into place and glued.  The whole lot was then placed onto the top wing/cockpit floor for alignment and taped down while it dried.

 

 

Here's the result so far.

 

 

 

Next step for this will be to tidy up the glue joints, then add the resin radio part together with some wires and plumbing.  The instrument panel is also to be added, but that is as yet unfinished.

 

The cockpit floor is complete.  I used the CMK rudder pedals together with some wiring  and floor detail from Eduard to spice this up a bit.  Some scratches were added to the floor behind the rudder pedals, though it's varely visible in these shots.

 

 

 

I've also started work on the fuselage halves.  The interior has been painted, and the first aid box added, together with the tail wheel top mount and rear radiator duct.  I've also added some alignment tabs, as Special Hobby provide nothing to help align the fuselage halves when these are glued together.

 

 

The tail wheel will be added much later in the build, so to facilitate this, I've turned the side mounts into a slot so that I can add the tail wheel straight up after painting.  Lastly, I've put one of the wheel wells together which is a bit of a pfaff.  The top wing was clamped into place, again for alignment while the parts set, but the parts fit here appears to be poor.  More on that in the next installment.

 

 

Cheers,

Michael

 

 

[Gazzas]

That's some nice work!

[Alain Gadbois]

Good job on the cockpit details! Don't want to jump ahead too much, but have you decided on the markings yet? The Normandie-Niemen (box top) ones are very nice.

Alain

[LSP_Ray]

Cockpit looks great! You're going to have that closed up in no time!

[Dpgsbody55]

On 12/21/2019 at 1:13 AM, Alain Gadbois said:

Good job on the cockpit details! Don't want to jump ahead too much, but have you decided on the markings yet? The Normandie-Niemen (box top) ones are very nice.

Alain

 

I have been thinking about markings, and my initial thoughts were to choose between one of the subjects provided in the kit (Normandie-Niemen), but I've seen something else which I'm thinking of ordering.  Not sure yet, and this time of year is expensive enough as it is

 

20 hours ago, LSP_Ray said:

Cockpit looks great! You're going to have that closed up in no time!

 

I wish!!  Right now I'm doing battle with the wings, then finish the cockpit, then look at how the prop mounts as I'm not happy with that or the canopy.  Could be a week or two yet.

 

 

Cheers,

Michael

[Fenous]

Beware of that first aid kit, if I remember correctly, it interferes with construction around cockpit so you will not be able to slide completed wing/cockpit into fuselage. Glue the first aid kit after that.

[Padubon]

On 12/12/2019 at 10:19 PM, Dpgsbody55 said:

So this is what I'm building, and I've added the Eduard interior detail set to the build.  I bought this kit when it first came out and put it away, waiting to see what aftermarket addons came out, which is my usual modus operandii.

 

 

I was going to start this in September, instead of my Meteor T7 build, but when I got it out and had a look, I noticed one of the undercarriage doors was missing.  My first thought was to scratch build one, but then I thought that I'd see how good Special Hobby's support is.  So I sent them an email to which they sent back a link requesting details of what I was missing, and a month or so later, this is what arrived back in the mail.

 

 

Not just the missing door, but  whole lot more instead.   So a big thank you to Special Hobby for their support.  Clearly in this instance, their support is very good. 

 

At the moment, I haven't got much done.  Some of the PE Eduard has been attached to the cockpit floor and side frames,  and the resin rudder pedals supplied in the Hi Tech kit have been glued on, and last night I went mad with the airbrush and painted as much as I could before assembly starts.

 

 

That's it for the moment.  The next installment should be a little more interesting.

 

 

Cheers,

Michael

 

 

Thank you for your post. You have encouraged me to start mine, thank you.

If you don’t mind a question, what color did you used for the cockpit interior?

[Dpgsbody55]

On 12/26/2019 at 4:52 AM, Fenous said:

Beware of that first aid kit, if I remember correctly, it interferes with construction around cockpit so you will not be able to slide completed wing/cockpit into fuselage. Glue the first aid kit after that.

 

Yes, I've found that out the hard way.    I think that when I assemble the fuselage onto the wing, I can carefully bend the frame around it.  I hope .

 

On 12/31/2019 at 2:29 AM, Padubon said:

Thank you for your post. You have encouraged me to start mine, thank you.

If you don’t mind a question, what color did you used for the cockpit interior?

 

Most of the info I've found on Russian WW2 paint colours is very variable in their definition of the shade, especially the interior colours, and it varied from factory to factory.  What I have painted matches closely a Yak 3 I photographed in New Zealand.  I started with light sea grey and added a little light blue to it.  However, I don't think I added enough now, but it's difficult to say for sure.

 

 

 

Hope this helps you.

 

BTW, progress continues.  I'm just loading pictures from my camera to my computer so I should have a proper update soon.

 

 

Cheers,

Michael

Edited January 1, 2020 by Dpgsbody55

[Dpgsbody55]

Here's the latest on this build.

 

At this point, I turned my attention to the wings.  Putting the cockpit floor together as I had, which is what is indicated by the instructions, was making me nervous.  I could see joysticks and rudder pedals getting busted, so I thought I'd finish the wings to a point that I can assemble them onto the fuselage.  If ever I build another of these, I'll make up the wings before adding the cockpit bits.

 

First I put in the undercarriage wheel wells.  However, the top wings would not fit into place without a lot of bending and cajoling, and that sort of thing will often cause more issues downstream.  I soon realised that the culprit was the U/C wheel wells.  The front wall has no taper to follow the wings section as it tapers along it's span.  This next picture was taken as I was most of the way through fitting the right top wing.  Notice that the top of the front wall needs to be parallel to the rear wall.

 

 

I tidied the right wing front wall up before taking care of the left wing fitment.  Next up, I added the fuel gauges, but here I didn't follow the instructions.  I painted some plastic sheet with a white circle, then added the gauge decal.

 

 

These were carefully glued into the top wing, then the clear part glued in from above.  In this image, there's a slight parallax issue, but the gauge does line up well.

 

 

I glued the top wing on, and this is where the model almost bit me.  As I've mentioned before, this kit has no alignment pins in many parts, and that includes the top and bottom wings.  I fixed this with the fuselage by adding tabs, but couldn't figure out any such way with the wings.  I glued the wings very carefully, but something slipped slightly on one side during the clamping process.

 

 

You'll notice that the vanes in the leading edge intakes are missing.  I left these out because the kit parts are too short vertically, and I've made my own. 

 

Unclamping revealed a tiny alignment problem with the right wing top and bottom, by about 0.5mm at the tip.  The trailing edge was filed level as was the aileron tab, and filler was added to the leading edge, as well as the air intakes.  Their interior surfaces were also too short vertically.  The left wing upper and lower align perfectly.

 

 

I also said in a previous post that I wasn't happy about the propeller fitment.  So this is what I've done about it.

 

 

I've added a length of 2mm aluminium tube to the left fuselage half, and braced it with some stock plastic.  The I carefully drilled out the back of the spinner to take a piece of 1mm brass tube and glued this into place with CA glue.  It spins beautifully with no wobble at all.  I've also added a short length of 0.5mm brass rod, which I may bend to act as a propeller retainer.  Not totally sure on that last point yet and part of my decision  is related to the paint scheme, which I also haven't yet decided on.

 

Continued.

[Dpgsbody55]

Now I've turned my attention back to the cockpit.  The radio was the next bit I worked on, and I found it a bit fiddly.  I've added wiring to it to enhance the look, but it needs wiring front and back.  I made up the back wires first, glued them, then immediately glued the radio into place.  Once this was dry, I started on the front wires.    I've also been working on the instrument panel, using Eduard photo etch to enhance it from anything I couldn't do as well.  Here's the result, though the IP is not quite complete.  I should add that I used both the kit part and the Eduard part for the oxygen gauges.  The wire leading out of the top of the oxygen gauges was also my work.  All the wire used here was 0.4 wire.

 

 

Here, the last knobs and handles have been added to the instrument panel.  Clear varnish was added to all the gauge faces too.  Wiring retainers were made from wine bottle sealing foil.

 

 

Lastly, the seat back and IP were added to the cockpit.  I've also added a couple of control rods exiting the cockpit forward from each of the consoles.

 

 

 

 

 

Back to the fuselage.  I painted the exhausts using steel enamel coloured paint, dry brushed with rust for ageing.  As this is the Hi-Tech kit, these are resin parts, and a good improvement on the plastic bits.  You can clearly see from the uneven grouping of the exhausts that these Klimov V-12's had siamesed porting in the heads, and this will explain, in part at least, why these engines struggled to make 1200hp, well down on Allied and German V-12's.  That the plane was as fast as it was is a testament to good air frame design.

 

 

These exhausts were dry fitted to the fuselage, with a small piece of paper acting as masking.  This can be removed with tweezers after painting.  The exhausts are a snug fit in their apertures, but I've added some retainers again using stock square rod.  Then the fuselage halves were glued together.

 

So here's where I'm up to now.  You can see the white paper masking where the exhausts are fitted.

 

 

Assembly of the major components is next, but not before I've cleaned up the fuselage joints.  The rear fuselage joints are very good, but the front joints will need a little more work.  I'll also be testing, filing, testing, filing and generally fiddling with the wing/fuselage joint, as I already kn ow it's not brilliant.  Wonky dihedral will also be on the list of things to check before final gluing, and I know the first aid box will be a further complication.  You may also notice pencil marks on the wing fillet, which are alignment marks when I mount the cockpit to the top wing.

 

Wish me luck .

 

 

Cheers,

Michael

Edited January 1, 2020 by Dpgsbody55