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
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