**** DONE : GB-53 1/48 Yak-3 - Eastern Front

[Crimea_River]

Got a start on the decals. I usually start with the bottom ones in case something goes wrong with the decals. I'd rather have a defect show on the bottom than in a more prominent position. As it turned out, the decals are a tad brittle and don't really respond to Solvaset so good learning for the rest.

The uppers were handled with care and went on OK so far. The white parts are a little translucent but there's not much I can do about that now.

More when the rest of the decals are on.

 

[Wurger]

 

[Gnomey]

Lovely work so far Andy!

 

[Vic Balshaw]

Looks great Andy.

 

[T Bolt]

That's looking really nice Andy

 

[Crimea_River]

Thanks again friends. The remaining decals went on without complaint and a bit of washing has started. Note that the "15s" are placed on a slant intentionally. Contrary to the instructions, photos of the actual aircraft (see page 1) showed these to be on a slant, probably because they were painted vertical when the aircraft was on the ground.

Next will be a bit more washing and matte-coating. Thanks again for following.

 

[Wurger]

 

[rochie]

Looks great

 

[Ralph Haus]

A spillover from Don's post on pre-shading. I see the affects; very subtle. I'm afraid I don't have enough AB control on application to pull it off.

I have been keeping up with this build, just not commenting. A beautiful effort to say the least. I'm also impressed with the Zvezda kit detail.

 

[fubar57]

Sweet

 

[Vic Balshaw]

Love it.

 

[Crimea_River]

Cheers fellas. Well, I'm done with those Tamiya panel washes as I find they are too aggressive with my clear coats and leave stains where I don't want 'em. I used the black wash a bit on the underside and then shelved the bottle and went with my own mix of water, dish soap, and ground black and brown pastels to finish the job. After I was satisfied, I sprayed a coat of Tamiya Flat Clear and pulled the masks. The prop is just dry-fitted for the pics:

One area I don't like is the very shallow moulded groove were the rudder fits to the vertical stab. It's so shallow that there is nothing for the wash to run into so it's hard to make it look like there's a separate control surface there. I'll need to mull over this for a bit and come up with something. Maybe more on that later. Ta-ta for now.

 

[Vic Balshaw]

It looks good even though you may have had a couple of wash problems.

 

[Crimea_River]

Thanks Vic. Not too worried about the underside as they tended to get filthy anyway. I'm going to add a few more streaks and stains yet.

 

[Wurger]

 

[rochie]

looks good Andy

 

[Wayne Little]

Nicely done Andy.

 

[Jamoliva]

Looks awesome!

 

[Crimea_River]

Appreciate the feedback guys, thanks. On to the landing gear. I flattened the tires with a file after checking that they thankfully should be vertical, unlike the 109. After gluing on the main struts, I stuck on the tires, rolled them to the flats, then glued them in place. Then all the doors were stuck on.

In the above pics, the jacks and linkages need to be repainted. Same goes for the edges of the doors. Now, it is rather odd that Zvezda, despite providing a huge amount of detail for the engine like very thin harness and hoses, omitted the very noticeable retraction frames for the inner gear doors as seen in the below pic from here: Yakovlev Yak-3 MOF Photo Walk Around

These are a bit too obvious to leave off so I'll need to scratch up a set. Note that the inner doors are also at a cant as opposed to straight up and down like I made them. An easy fix.

Next, the prop was finished off by adding the stencils, chipping the edges with a silver pencil, and spraying the aluminum wear pattern on the back side:

That's all for today. See you next time.

 

[Vic Balshaw]

That may be all for today but my goodness its good.