Building ICM's 1/48th Yak-9T by Gary Byrne

ICM has been both praised and criticized for their kits so I was looking forward to working on one. To be honest I was a little disappointed when I opened the box - the detail seemed a little heavy and some of the finer details were just not there. However there were only a couple of sink marks which would be easy to fix.

Preparation

If you've read any reviews of ICM kits they always mention the separation grease and they weren't kidding!
I had to wash the model twice to get rid of the filmy feeling on all the surfaces.

Now I'm not a rivet counter by any stretch of the imagination but to me some of the surface detail is barren. Using the drawings in the AJ Press Yak-7/Yak-9 book as reference I decided to try my hand at scribing some panel lines. The fuselage side panels, tail, cowling and underside were all given some attention.

Unfortunately my fine bit broke while working on the underside so I'll have to finish those areas once I get a replacement bit. The machine gun trough was rounded off, drilled out a piece of brass tubing was inserted to represent the UBS machine gun.

Interior Details

To say the cockpit details are Spartan is an overstatement but early on I decided to build this model using the kit supplied closed canopy. Still I couldn't resist adding some details to the interior. Paper seat belts and foot straps were added, the rudder pedal mechanism were fixed with some wire and plastic bits, I added some details to the floor, sidewalls and control panels and replaced the control stick with one made from stretched sprue as the angles of the kit part looked too sharp to me. Since I wasn't going to include the engine I built a firewall from plastic card and used some sprue and wire to represent the cannon cocking device.

A test fit of the cockpit found the fit to be quite tight on the backend. I thought at first the problem was the guide pins which were more like blobs of plastic. However after flattening them out with a square file the fit was still unsatisfactory. I then realised the problem was with the tubing moulded on the side walls. In order to fix the fit I notched the floor board in two places on both sides where the tubing comes down to meet it. While dry fitting I hit on the idea of inserting the completed cockpit from underneath once the fuselage halves were joined together sort of like the Accurate Miniatures Yak-1. The benefit here is that when you join the fuselage halves you only have to worry about lining up the main console and radio tray.

Exterior Details

With the fuselage together I started working on the cowling side panels. A lot of sanding is required to get them to fit correctly. Since I wasn't using the engine the exhausts had to be glue into the openings. However, if you follow the instructions the exhausts will end up sticking out way too much so check your references.

Work on the wings included drilling out the fuel gauges, rounding off the wings tips and adding actuators to the control surfaces. When drilling out the gauges, simply blanking off the bottom of the hole puts the gauges too low so I inserted a small plastic disc into each one to make the depth more appropriate.

The wing tips look too squared off at the end while drawings show a more curved sweep up to the tips so I trimmed and sanded the trailing edges.

The wings were attached by first gluing the lower section to the fuselage. Some sanding is required here to improve the fit. I then glued the upper sections. By pushing down on the wing roots and pulling up on the wing tips while the glue dried I was able to minimize gaps and get a good wing dihedral. I say minimize because I still had to do some filling with the worst part being the underside area where the flaps run into the fuselage section.

Once the wings were set the control surfaces were glued on and I added actuator rods made of stretched sprue. To improve the landing gear I added some brake lines and scissor links made from plastic card and stretched sprue. The holes for the struts also had to be widened to make them fit. Actually the whole wheel well should be rebuilt but that will have to wait for another project.

Painting and Finishing

After filling and sanding various cracks and crevasses I glued the canopy on, masked off the clear areas and gave the entire model a coat of Model Master Russian Underside Blue to act as primer. This also revealed a couple of minor sinks that I had over-looked on the fuselage near the cockpit and a few other uneven spots left from my initial filling and sanding. Once these areas were corrected I rescribed any lost panel lines and got ready to paint.

I decided finish this model as the shark mouthed "White 39" that is shown in 2 photos in AJ Monograph #14 and is also shown in profile on this site in the article Big Gun Yaks, Pt. 2. I preshaded the panel lines and recoated the undersides with Russian Underside Blue while the upper surfaces where given a coat of Russian Topside Grey. I was little leery of this colour once it was applied as I thought it was too light and closer to Aeh-9 or AMT-1 than AMT-11. Once I applied Euro I Grey to represent the AMT-12 camo, I was sure the first colour was wrong.

What to do next? Leave it or over-spray it with another colour? In the end I masked off the dark grey areas and over-sprayed a light coat of Russian Underside Grey which ironically looked much better.

However, I had to use a brush to fix a few areas where the masks were off a bit and left some slivers of light grey. In retrospect I should have just over-sprayed the entire upper surface as the dark grey would have still showed through albeit a tint lighter. Next came a bit of fun - the shark mouth. I decided to hand paint this element which is how I believe the original was done and besides I am much more confident with a brush for fine work.

Once all the colours were dry I prepared for the decals by brushing a thin coat of Future floor wax over the entire model. Since I didn't have a decal set for this particular AC I was going to use some of the numbers and stencils from the kit and others from Aeromaster's "The Russians Are Here!", Part 1 sheet. The ICM decals were a disaster. While some of the stencils came off ok most of the decals including the numbers I wanted to use simply disintegrated. My only option now would be to paint the numerals on using masks and my air brush. This turned out less than perfect but passable once some touch-up work was done. I wanted to keep the weathering subtle so as not to take away from the nose are so I just a darkened the panel lines with a thin mix of black and brown acrylics, added some minor scuffing/fading at the wing roots and cockpit side and exhaust stains.

Conclusions

When I first saw the contents of the box my initial reaction was one of disappointment. However as the build progressed I really ended up liking this kit. True it is no Tamigawa kit but there are no major fit problems and lots of potential. I would even go as far as to say I had more fun building this kit than Tamiya's P-47 and I now have a stack of ICM kits waiting to be built.