Yak-3
Yak-3
Yak-3 ( Phil ). Heller. "This
is 1/72 SMER/Heller Yak 3, almost built from the box. A few spares from Hasegawa
were added ( landing gear cover and struts). Decals come from an Extratech sheet,
this is major Delfino's plane (Normandie-Niemen regiment), at Elbing, East Prussia,
May 1945."
Yak-3
Yak-3 ( Mark Shannon ). Hasegawa.
"The cockpit was enhanced with scratchbuilt features such as the framework
and a gunsight, but right now is enclosed in the closed canopy because I didn't
want to take the time to thin the Hasegawa three-piece. They are nicely visible
through the clear Hasegawa canopy until such time as my vacu-formed versions
get made. The colors were mixed from Humbrol paints or suggestions from the
Color Research page of the website (pre-WEM) to match AMT-11/AMT-12/AMT-7. The
incorrect panel lines were filled using Mr. Surfacer 500 - and it was the fastest
method I've ever used. Landing gear covers, including the tailwheel, were thinned
considerably. The trickiest part was that spinner - I had trouble keeping it
steady while masking since the thing is tinier than my little fingernail. I
replaced the odd-shaped kit spinner with a spare from the Roden LaGG-3 series
1 kit - it only needed a little adjusting of the 'slots' for the blades. Weathering
was with oil washes and pa stel chalks."
Yak-3
Yak-3 ( István Vadász ). Hasegawa, Baltic Front , 64. GIAP; pilot: Rogovoj Szemen Ivanovics 1944 autumn. Decals: Emhar Yak-3 Painting: Gunze H-RLM78; Tamiya XF-20; Gunze H-Field Grau.
Yak-3
Yak-3 ( Augusto Versiani). Hasegawa built out of the box.
Yak-3s
Yak-3s ( Pawel Piwonski ) One of our Polish readers has submitted his three nicely completed Yak-3 models using three different kits in 1/72: Heller, Intech, and Hasegawa. His site is largely in Polish, but perhaps we can pursuade him to also add some english text here at a later date.
Yak-3
Yak-3 ( Alex Ruchkovsky ). 1:72 Yak-3 by Hasegawa is good, isnt it? Replacing the spinner and filling the wing panel lines will do it right. The two areas of serious improvement were the cockpit and the wheel wells. The model is finished in colors of 150 GIAP, red 12 is said to be piloted by V Nosov, Hero of Soviet Union, color profile first published in the Ukrainian AviO magazine (issue #3) and reproduced many times in Russian and foreign sources.
Yak-3
Yak-3 ( Bill Arnold ). Hasegawa kit with the canopy open, and added photo-etch seat belts. Some wheel well detail has been added. Pastel shading, and Model Master paint.
Yak-3
Yak-3 ( Bill Arnold ). Hasegawa kit built out of the box.
Yak-3
Yak-3 ( Ilya Grinberg). VES kit.
Yak-3
Yak-3 ( Erik Pilawskii). I startedwith the Hasegawa 1/72 scale kit and proceeded to remove all of the spurious panel line detail from the wings. I then made "rivet" holes for the cowling and wing root fairing, but these turned out to be much too large and dramatic. Most cockpit detail was scratch-built, but aside from that the kit is basically OOB. "White 9" was finished in the standard later-war VVS scheme of Medium Grey over Blue-Grey Primer, and was piloted by Djilos Moritsov of the 419IAP in 1944.
Yak-3
Yak-3 ( Kreig Leuschner ). Kreig has built a very skillful Yak-3 out of the old and generally unimpressive Airfix kit. Here's his description: "The model is the old Airfix YAK 3. As you can see, it is modeled after General G.N. Zakharov's personal YAK. I modified the air intakes on the wing roots, scratch built a gunsight, drilled the gun barrels made a stretched sprue antenna. The rest of the model is pretty much out of box."
Yak-3
Yak-3 ( Erik Pilawskii). Again another Hasegawa kit, suitably corrected. This machine depicts the aircraft "White 39" of the blistering VVS ace Mikhail Balakan, 31 GIAP, winter of 1944-45. In only 112 military flights, Balakan engaged the enemy a mere 22 times, and yet managed to shoot down 15 confirmed enemy fighters, with another 5 victories 'shared'; virtually one aircraft per combat! He later died in an accident in the Soviet Kosmonaut programme.
