Eduard Yak-3 Profipack

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he Yakovlev Yak-3 was a World War II Soviet fighter aircraft. Robust and easy to maintain, was much liked by pilots and ground crew alike.  It was one of the smallest and lightest major combat fighters fielded by any combatant during the war, and its high power-to-weight ratio gave it excellent performance. It proved a formidable dogfighter. Marcel Albert, the official top-scoring World War II French ace that flew the Yak with the Normandie-Niémen Group, regarded it a superior aircraft to the P-51D Mustang and to the Supermarine Spitfire.

Eduard 8089 kit Yak-3 is not at all the newest release but a re-release of an excellent kit, my personal favorite. Beautifully designed Eduard box contains 54 plastic parts, photoetched fret, masks and five decal options for this formidable kit. Model is beautifully molded presenting finely engraved panel lines that are crisp and clean. Rivet details are just as they should be for this scale. Clear parts are excellent and with outstanding level of transparencies. Eduard provided two canopies, so a modeler can chose between closed or open canopy.  I started this build from the cockpit which is well detailed with excellent detailed levers, some of these are provided as photoetched parts. Building this kit went really straightforward and I had no problems with it. Perhaps the only thing that needed to be fixed during the assembly process was to add tiny wall in the wing root intakes, simple but effective. I also drilled the exhaust holes and that was all upgrades the kit needed. Almost none filler was needed so the kit was rapidly prepared for painting. As standard equipment of profipack kits Eduard provided masks which are perfect for this kit.

Marking options are as follows:

• Guards Lieutenant Colonel Boris Nikolaevich Yeryomin, 31st GIAP, Prague, Czechoslovakia, May, 1945
• Lieutenant Semyon Ivanovich Rogovoi, 64th GIAP, 2nd Baltic Front, Fall, 1944
• Lieutenant Colonel Anton Dmitrievich Yakimenko, 151st GIAP, Czechoslovakia, May, 1945
• Generalmajor Georgii Nefyodovich Zakharov, 303rd IAD, East Prussia, Fall, 1944
• Lieutenant Colonel Ivan Vasilievich Maslov, 157th IAP, Germany, 1945

Eduard decals are thin and in register and the colors look right. I have decided to finish my kit with Zakharov markings, in the color scheme that is standard for Yak-3 fighters with exception of yellow-red spinner with black outline. I used White Ensign models AMT 11/12/7 paints for painting my model, and they look pretty close for my taste. After a coat of Future I applied decals and sealed them with another coat of Future. I applied raw umber oil wash followed by Tamiya smoke post-shading. Everything was sealed with Model Master Flat varnish.

I really enjoyed building another Yak-3 by Eduard, and between us, this was not the last Eduard Yak-3 kit I will build. I have fallen for this kit again and you guess…I bought another one for my stash…

This kit is Highly recommended! Direct buy it here!

Sample kit is provided by Jan Zdiarsky from Eduard

Darko Mladenovic