1/48 Eduard Yak-3

by Raphael L. Marbella, MD

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      This is the Eduard Yak 3 (non-profipack) kit that I recently finished. The base kit itself builds into an excellent model but I took the liberty of making some minor modifications. These included some stretched sprues for levers/throttles, masking tape for seat harness, drilled out the gun ports/exhausts, plastic card as wingroot air intake dividers, spinal needle for the pitot tube and I also split into two the outer landing gear walls. Initially I wanted to use the gunsight that came with the kit but prior to installing, it accidentally flew off and eventually was devoured by the carpet monster (good thing I found another in the spares box). For the livery, I used the kit decals which snuggled down alright.

Click on images below to see larger images

  

      The kit was then painted using various mix of Tamiya acrylics and masked with the help of Blu Tac. Since I opted to do Yellow 15 which according to instructions belonged to Semion Rogow of the 1st Guards Fighter Division, I minimized the weathering. My premise there was that since the aircraft belonged to an elite unit, the ground crews would've taken better care of their machines compared to those in the line units (we wouldn't want to have Stalin angry seeing the best of his air force dirty, would we?). Anyway, I used oil paints and pastel chalk for the gun/exhaust stains and some scratches using Tamiya silver paint for the minimal wear depicted.

     Based on my reference sources (the VVS site and pictures from the Prime Portal site), I know I didn't get the correct hue (or even the camo pattern for that matter) but somehow am still satisfied with it. Hope you are too.
     Thank you to the fellow modelers of ARC and IPMS Philippines for the constant inspiration you guys give.

Raphael L. Marbella, MD

Photos and text © by Raphael L. Marbella, MD