I have become a bit of an Armaholic during the last year and today two samples of Wojtek's latest masterpiece arrived in the mail! I put in a preorder for these back in August and was awarded with an extra overtrees kit so this will be a double build.


As ususal, beautiful box art!


A generous selection of different marking options. I'll go for the top one with the yellow spinner and Polish chess board (after all the kits are Made in Warsaw ) and the bottom one from Normandie-Niemen. That will give me a bit of variety when it comes to painting as well, one grey and one green!


As usual with Arma, everything is kept on one single sprue. Perfect for Magnus the Slow Builder! There is also a small piece of etch and masks, something I suspect will only be included in the "Expert"-boxings. Only one set of masks by the way, I'll have to do the other one the old fashioned way...


Surface detail (even if there isn't a load of it on a Yak)...


...is nearing Eduard quality. With every new kit released they get a bit sharper!


And finally I couldn't resist these. I am a rookie when it comes to Soviet paints so this was the easy way out (and it has NOTHING to do with the attractive packaging ).

So, let's put knife to plastic!



Magnus

Well, Magnus, it would seem that you are working your way through all of the kits on my shopping wish list!

Your next planned build wouldn't happen to be a Tamiya P-47 by any chance?

Anyway's this kit from Arma looks great! Following with interest as always!

Now, if only someone would do a modern tool of the Yak 9 in 1/72...

PS. It looks like I've taken the Airfix guy title, as you've taken up Armaholic guy!

It does look very good Magnus. The trailing edge on the rudder looks sharp and the engraved detail looks excellent. Look forward to your build

Russell! Nope, no T-bolt! I think I have a Hasegawa Razorback in my stash somewhere but no Tamiya... Can you get Arma in Australia or do you have to buy them directly from Poland? And the Yak-9? That's a kit you won't need to import from overseas, I have a High Planes kit of it. Thoroughly recommended for building modelling stamina, character and karma !

Tim! The plastic parts are remarkably sharp and fit looks very promising.


Two kits but etch for only one. For the radiators and the oil coolers, there are grilles for both front and rear faces. Since front and rear are identical, I opted for using the etch on both kits and adding the parts to the forward facing surfaces.


I am not sure how much the etch really adds...


...but there weren't too much of it so on it went!


Seat belts can be made from tape, and it actually shapes a bit better than the etch!



Magnus

Hi Magnus
Mmm, the Tamiya P-47 is reputedly one of the best 1/72 kits on the market, so it's definitely on the shopping list.

Yes, no problem getting Arma kits in Australia. So the Hurricane and Yak 1 will be no problem. Whether the Dora Wings Lysander will make it, well, we'll have to wait and see

As for building stamina, character and karma, well, I have ship kits for that

Back to the Yak though. Building up very nicely in these early stages!

Russell! Ship kits are on a whole different planet than anything I build. I have been looking longingly on Hasegawa's Gambier Bay escort carrier with all the goodies but I know that I would never be able to finish it so it has to stay a dream... I also realise that for a first shop model, it might border on too complex... Lysander is on my wish list as well !


This is a method that is forbidden in the southern part of Sweden where I cut my first pieces of plastic but I've been using it ever since I moved to the more liberal city of Stockholm. White primer and then airbrushing black from an angle to get the shadows in place before painting the main colours. Note that I have also for once tried to mask as many mating surfaces as possible, dry fitting suggests that this might be a good idea since fit does seem to be absolutely top notch.


I decided to use (after jumping from conversion table to conversion table in far too many steps) Tamiya XF-53 with a bit of white in it for Soviet Interior Steel Grey. I have no idea what it really should look like but XF-53 is the perfect choice for "whatever-grey" I think !


And now detail painting is on! A bit more work to do during the weekend and my forbidden practice from above will need to be enhanced with a wash. I might have a pair of complete Yaks by Sunday evening!



Magnus

Looking good Magnus. Yup I've taken to masking mating surfaces too, so much easier than trying to scrape off unwanted paint, or fighting against really fine tolerances...

Russell! Thanks!


After a dark wash to further deepen the shadows a bit...


...and mounting the interior parts into the fuselage sides, there probably will be a bit of major assembly done this afternoon!

Note that instrument panel is plastic kit panel with the supplied decal added, nice! I didn't bother with the PE for this part, it didn't add anything extra.



Magnus

The instrument panel looks great Magnus, as does the rest of the cockpit. Even if they don't approve in the southern part of Sweden

I've spent an hour this evening assembling both Yaks. Fit is close to perfect if assembled with care.



Magnus

Looking superb Magnus!

Really keen to see them in contrasting colour schemes

Magnus,

great performance on those Yaks. Creating shadows the way You do sounds rather interesting. I will give it a try.

Keep on posting!

Oliver

Russell! There is a taste of the future schemes below if you're still curious

Oliver! Try it! It is also useful for actually seeing where the shadows go, if you loose the effect after painting it is easy to fill them in again later (learnt from Janne the Serious Figure Painting Teacher ).

I've been working hard this week, filling and sanding the main airframes and preparing all smaller parts for primer.


Fit is as I've said before near perfect (among the best kits I've ever built) but there are a few small sink marks to deal with: you can see them behind the cockpit, around the roots of the stabilisers and in the fuselage halves behind the wing on the lower surfaces. Not a big thing but it has to be fixed!


This is what the look like after a first coat of Tamiya Fine White primer (not very interesting actually...).


Bits and pieces!


And finally a camo test, especially for Russell ! I like the green/black a lot, not so much the grey colours. I would like both to look more bluish, now I think the light grey goes towards purple and the darker is a slightly brownish grey. Or something along these lines, I don't like it though !



Magnus

Magnus, thank you for the camo test

I agree with you, the colours seem a little off... will be curious to see how this unfolds as you resolve the matter

Russell! Camo test Mk II:


I kept the blue-grey AMT-11 (the lighter base colour) and tried a recipe for AMT-12 I got from a friend who, in his turn, picked it from the Eduard Yak-3 instruction sheet. They recommend Gunze H331, I added a drop of blue and a few drops of white and this is more in the right ballpark I think. I'll add a bit less blue when going live on my Yak! I kept a sliver of Hataka's take on AMT-12 near the wing tip for reference.


Canopies masked...


...painted grey...


...and lower surfaces got a quick coat of blue!



Magnus

I masked off the lower surfaces and gave both models a quick base coat of green and grey, both Hataka paints out of the bottle but with a bit of Mr Paint clear added to get a smoother surface.


After leaving the Yaks to dry for a few hours, I did the black (this is actually a 50/50 mix of Hataka Night Black and AMT-12 "Dark Grey") freehand. There are some minor touch-ups to do but on the whole I'm quite happy with the result.


This I'm less happy with... While painting yesterday there was an increasing sound of pressure escaping where it shouldn't, after some investigation this morning I realised that the tube from the tank to the pressure contact has cracked. Bad quality, I only bought the compressor in March of 1996 ! Anyway, I'll see if I can shorten the tube to remove the leak temporarily, then I'll get some 6 mm pneumatic PA-tubing to fix it permanently the coming week!



Magnus

We're up-and-running again!

I found some lab tubing at home that seems to hold up well enough. Going to one of my customer's tomorrow where I know they have real pneumatic tubing, I'll ask nicely if I can get a few decimeters of it !


And immediately taking advantage of the newly renovated compressor, I managed to both finish the camo AND give the grey one a clear coat. Maybe some decals later tonight !

The green one needs a bit of extra work on the camouflage, it has a kind of "fish scale"-effect around the nose and I don't know how to recreate that yet. I'll think about it and will do some experiments later!



Magnus

good to see the troubles with the compressor are under control Magnus and you're keeping the fires of the one true scale burning bright!

The Airfix 1/72 Hurricane recently hit my bench for the Sopwith-Hawkers campaign but I'm concerned at the discovery of a fair amount of water lurking in my compressor tank even after I bleed it each and every paint session!

Russell! Water in the tank is most probably due to summer in Australia with humid air condensing in the tank when the pressure drops when painting. PxV=RxT


I did the fish-scale effect with a paintbrush and Vallejo paints (Olive Drab over the green, plain black over the "black")...


...and this is how it all ended up! I will try and thin some of the original paint and paint it over to tone down the effect slightly. It is hard to tell from the original photos what it really looked like and even harder to guess why and how it was made!


Keeping the steam up on the grey one!





Magnus

Both coming along nicely Magnus. Chances are the fish scales were applied by brush in the field by some creative irks! Yours look the business!

Continuing to investigate ways to keep the moisture out of the tanks

Russell! Nobody escapes the Ideal Gas Law !

We're getting into December now but they should be finished before Christmas...


Decal work finished on the green aircraft as well...


...complete with a nice shark mouth. Or is it a tiger, it has whiskers? There will be some touch-up to connect the black lines around the lip and some red where the decals didn't overlap.


There is some impressive raised detail on the wheel sides that I managed to scrape out using a toothpick after I had painted the tires black.



Magnus

Hello Magnus,
thank You for the memories of my school chemistry .

The Yaks come out very nice. I like the fish scale very much.

And the marks on the tires are really amazing. Great kit. Great build.

Oliver

Coming along real nice Magnus!

the raised detail on the tires is really impressive!

Another 2 to add to the collection before the year is out?

Brings your tally for this to?

Oliver! I was going through the chemistry homework with my daughter who is 15 so I had a bit of help with that memory myself...

Russell! If nothing disastrous happens, these will be numbers eight and nine this year ! Truly a World Record for me !


Masking the spinner, paint demarcation is a strip of tape and then I cover the rest in Micro Mask...


...and continuing with our scientific theme, above is how to cut a correctly curved piece of tape for masking a nearly conical object! You will need to slice the circle in order to get it to wrap around the spinner. Try it, it works!



Magnus

On to the weathering/general-livening-up-process!

I start with the lower surfaces, on of the few places where there are any detail on the skin of a Yak !


Note that I have actually tried to get them to look at least a slight bit different to each other!



Magnus