Yak-1B by Eduard
The Yakovlev series of fighters was simple and effective and I must say that a similar claim can be stated for the plastic kits of these famous fighters. For me it is always a pleasure to see when Eduard takes a kit of another manufacturer and fully upgrades it with their extras.
Accurate Miniatures produced a nice kit of the Yak-1B in 1/48 scale and it was the subject of the Eduard Limited Edition product. With stock code 1194, you get a nice instruction booklet and plastic parts, excellent etched parts, decals and quick mask for the transparent parts. Eduard also provides one more product, this is upgrade set stock code 48853 and it includes new landing gear doors, complete flaps as well as a number of additional details, mostly for external use. The build presented here is a combination of these two products.
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Start of this build begins at placing of some small etched parts on the cockpit floor and painting of the interior. I used the kind of paint I have used for years, it is mid grey shade but it is not problem if you use lighter then mine. A bit of a problem is presented while painting of wire lines in cockpit and I use blue color, as seen on one restored Yak fighter. Good thing is that the rest of the painted details are provided by pre painted etched parts, so there is not much to work on painting details inside. Exhaust slots need to be closed from inside and I used a strip of styrene plastic. Other conversions include removing of the flaps from the wing bottom and it is easy task to do. It is important that top of the flap box (surface of the top wing), must be very carefully sanded and must be very flat to avoid problems with etched flaps. As see on images, work on cockpit and flaps can be done side by side.
The kit plastic parts are of good precision but the gap where wing joins fuselage is a bit larger so I filled it and sanded it and after that engraved much finer lines there. I replaced elements of tail landing gear door and used etched parts replacement for the main landing gear doors. Additional etched set include many new parts, like various access panels and reinforcing lines and cooling flaps.
The landing flaps are very detailed but I think they are not well designed. A problem is that the main spar is given as three separate parts which need to be cement at the top of the flaps ribs. This is not a problem for me as well as some other very experienced modelers but for many others, it could be a problem. My opinion is that these three parts should be made as one piece, bent on two lines and slot in ribs. Apart from this, parts are very precise and assembly goes more or less easy. Final look is impressive.
For the final subject, I chose to make a kit of plane flown by Captain Cuvelev, it was a nicely decorated Yak-1B, with white bands as well as red nose. The plane is much worn out so on wings need to be applied a coat of paint similar to wood filler and on wing root need to be spray metal base since the paint was peeling off on this area too.
I am very pleased with this kit as well as the sets available for it and I would gladly recommend it, great to build!! My great thanks goes to Eduard for sample products they provided me.
Srecko Bradic
