Yak 23 Bulgarian / Romanian wing insignia

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That walk around video is awesome! Ok ... so looks like enough evidence for Romanian stars on top wing... cool. But I'm really keen to use the yellow numbers. Haven't seen any Romanian birds with yellow numbers. Seems all are red so far.

Yes it looks like most of them had the red numbers with a white or black outline. However there could be exceptions. See the image below. If there was the black outline it would be visible clearly. Thoughts?

yak23-56_romania.jpg

the source: the Mosin-Nagant in Romania after WWII
the source of the orginal pic : Log into Facebook
 
Yes it looks like most of them had the red numbers with a white or black outline. However there could be exceptions. See the image below. If there was the black outline it would be visible clearly. Thoughts?

View attachment 685839
the source: the Mosin-Nagant in Romania after WWII
the source of the orginal pic : Log into Facebook
Yeah that's solid red. Looks like I'll have to decide between Yellow 25 Bulgarian with no top wing star or...... Romanian with top wing star but red number (I think I have 41 & 14 )
 
And a line of Bulgarian Yaks ..

yak23-11bulg.jpg

the source: the net.
 
So just going to throw in a theoretical.... I have the option of using a yellow 52 or reversing it and making it 25. The yellow 52 was meant for a Soviet aircraft. It could have remained yellow 52 if given to Bulgaria / Romania. Since we have a yellow 23 Bulgarian on display, might they have had a yellow 25?

cheers
You can use any number you want for a Bulgarian a/c. Bulgaria received more than 100-120 exemplars.
The restored "Yellow 23" was formerly a "Red 42" I believe:
yak-23-1.jpg

25-1%7E6.jpg

The museum obviously wanted to show 2 different variants of the a/c when in use.
 
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You can use any number you want for a Bulgarian a/c. Bulgaria received more than 100-120 exemplars.
The restored "Yellow 23" was formerly a "Red 42" I believe:
View attachment 685907
View attachment 685908
The museum obviously wanted to show 2 different variants of the a/c when in use.
Nice...so they mounted them up on the bricks after restoration I suppose. I have red 41, 01, 14 and yellow 52 / 25.... I like yellow so will probably go with Yellow 25
cheers
 
Unfortunately neither any image of the Bulgarian Yaks nor of the Romanian ones shows the insignia on the wing tops. It seems that the rule was to apply them at the six locations. I mean both on the fuselage, fin sides and undersides. The only difference were the Czechoslovakian planes. These didn't have the markings on their fuselage sides. So the two insignias were applied on the wing tops to keep the number of six markings applied. Because the Romanian Yak-23s had the insignias on the fuselage sides it looks there weren't these on the wing tops.

The Czechoslovakian Yak-23s ...
View attachment 685749
View attachment 685751
the pic source: Rychlý rozvoj letectví "zabil" jaky, které se u nás měly licenčně vyrábět - iDNES.cz

a Romanian one ...
View attachment 685750
the source: Log into Facebook
The photo of the Yak-23 from the Romanian Air Force comes from me, I posted it on Facebook in 2014, I think. I received the picture to scan from the pilot in the picture, Lt. Grigore Cernea. The picture is from 1957-1958 at Caransebes airfield.
 

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Ok Interesting.
Well in the end after all that researching, the crappy decals in the Mister Craft kit just fell to pieces as I cut them from the main card. All of them! I've never seen anything as bad in my life. Luckily the yellow 52 was on a different card and was ok. I had to scrounge through my spares box and found some soviet stars to use. So in the end it became soviet yellow 52 as per many photos. However the tail stars have a white border but I had nothing else and I wasn't going to spend one more cent on this kit. It was a horror kit. I had to completely reshape the nose with filler to make it look one piece as it came with an ill fitting nose cap. I had to use filler on the wing roots. The canopy did not fit at all and again had to use lots of filler to blend it in to the fuselage. It had a square hole about 4x3mm behind the cockpit for no reason which again I had to fill in. There was no exhaust nozzle at all so I scratch build one. I was happy with how the nose turned out after a lot of work. But the rest of the model is pretty crud. Will never buy a Mister Craft kit again.
 

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Ok Interesting.
Well in the end after all that researching, the crappy decals in the Mister Craft kit just fell to pieces as I cut them from the main card. All of them! I've never seen anything as bad in my life. Luckily the yellow 52 was on a different card and was ok. I had to scrounge through my spares box and found some soviet stars to use. So in the end it became soviet yellow 52 as per many photos. However the tail stars have a white border but I had nothing else and I wasn't going to spend one more cent on this kit. It was a horror kit. I had to completely reshape the nose with filler to make it look one piece as it came with an ill fitting nose cap. I had to use filler on the wing roots. The canopy did not fit at all and again had to use lots of filler to blend it in to the fuselage. It had a square hole about 4x3mm behind the cockpit for no reason which again I had to fill in. There was no exhaust nozzle at all so I scratch build one. I was happy with how the nose turned out after a lot of work. But the rest of the model is pretty crud. Will never buy a Mister Craft kit again.

Actually it is not the Mistercraft kit but the old KP no.18 kit from end of 70'- beginning 80' . The KP is known as Kovozavody Prostejov today.
Looking good though. :thumbright:

KP18.jpg

the source: the net.


PS. My one assembled about 35 years ago ...

full.jpg
 
Actually it is not the Mistercraft kit but the old KP no.18 kit from end of 70'- beginning 80' . The KP is known as Kovozavody Prostejov today.
Looking good though. :thumbright:

View attachment 690745
the source: the net.


PS. My one assembled about 35 years ago ...

View attachment 690786
Hey Wurger, better than mine...lol. So you must have re-shaped/filled the nose section like I did. With the nose cap that came with the kit (right at the tip) it looked wrong. Did not have a smooth one piece looking nose. I think I can just make out that square hole behind cockpit like mine had.
 
Hey Wurger, better than mine...lol. So you must have re-shaped/filled the nose section like I did. With the nose cap that came with the kit (right at the tip) it looked wrong. Did not have a smooth one piece looking nose. I think I can just make out that square hole behind cockpit like mine had.


THX. As memo serves yes, I had to sand the nose section a little bit. But not too much. It looks like the time affected the moulds.

And I agree with GrauGeist. The hole behind the cockpit is said to be a window to the radio compartment. It can be noticed in pics or not. Sometimes it is protruding from the fuselage top slightly. But it seems that not all of planes had the "window" there. However I'm not sure if it was the window. According to a couple of diagrams it might have been an dielectric cover of antenna for a radio nav device for instance. Anyway a couple of Polish Floras exhibited in museums have there a metal plate attached though. It is very likely that these could be attached to just cover the slot there because the device there had been dimounted.

A PM sent.
 
The photo of the Yak-23 from the Romanian Air Force comes from me, I posted it on Facebook in 2014, I think. I received the picture to scan from the pilot in the picture, Lt. Grigore Cernea. The picture is from 1957-1958 at Caransebes airfield.

Another photo from me, posted on Facebook. In the picture Lt. Benko Francisc, Caransebes, 1956-57.

Thank you for providing the correct links to both pictures. Also thank you for the info on both pilots. That's great.

:wave:
 

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