Yak-11 'Ölyv' - RS Models

The kit comes in a top opening box, excellent for keeping the parts from getting lost and to be able to put aside between building sessions. 

A few different versions are provided: Czech, Hungarian, Polish and Mali. The Hungarian aircraft is number "19", which is on exhibition at the Szolnok Aviation Museum in Hungary, and which I had a chance to see and document for myself. 

The upper surface is a cold light gray and the underside is a weird duck egg blue. Some artistic license applied here: originally the demarcation line did not have this rounded shape but went in a straight line all the way to the nose. The red star in the center of the spinner is also a bit questionable, but looks awesome, so I will try to reproduce it. 

The instructions are terribly vague to say the least - no precise locations at all and no location marks on the parts either. Photo references are mandatory. 

The decal sheet looks beautifully printed - let's hope it works out, it looks frightfully thin. 

Almost no visible carrier film, and perfect register. 

Fret 1 - the plastic looks gray in the photo, but it is actually light tan colored. The recessed panel lines are mostly very neat and precise. 

Fret 2 - that's all folks! Oh a one piece transparency too. 

The instructions will have you assemble the cockpit first, but I figured it would be easier to assemble the fuselage first and add the cockpit assembly from the large opening underneath. That way I can find the correct height and forward/aft position of the cockpit, as there are no location lugs or anything.
 

Don't forget this little shelf on the back. It is in fact the only part that has distinct location lugs, everything else needs to be eyeballed into place. And no, I did not do the scribing of those rectangles with my left hand, it is really this wonky from the box. To be fair, it looks far worse in the macro photos than in real life. 

I opened up the engine exhaust slits that are just molded as blind walls, but in hindsight I shouldn't have bothered, as nothing will be visible once the cover flaps are in place. 

The cooling louvres are available as photo-etched parts, but since they are also shown in the closed position, I will save myself a lot of effort and keep the original part. 

Nose ring cemented onto the fuselage. The ring is slightly larger in diameter than the fuselage and needs to be sanded down a bit. Thankfully no major panel lines are lost. 

The cockpit is built around a flat floor and left and right consoles with molded on struts. It is a clever solution to create an appearance of the internal fuselage bracing structure. 

Scratching my head while dry-fitting, I realized that the instructions for the cockpit are totally wrong. It would have you to add the side consoles at an elevated position from the floor, making the cockpit much too deep and narrow (the seats would completely disappear deep down in the cockpit well). Furthermore it tells you to cement the cockpit assembly to the right fuselage half. That would be a complete mess as the cockpit floor should not even touch the sides. 

This is how the consoles should go. See, no gaps between the floor and the side consoles. Check photos of the real thing if you don't believe me. 

Both consoles in place, and I also added the pilot's rear bulkhead. There are only some extremely vague and ambiguous location markings for this part, so you need to use reference photos and think ahead! 

Since the instructor's seat otherwise would have no floor to be cemented to, I extended the cockpit floor with a piece of scrap styrene. Not sure if RS actually did some test builds of this kit at all... 

Adding a few photo-etched details to the cockpit, pedals and levers. Some of the levers are microscopic and almost not possible to use, but it's worth a try! 

The joystick needs to have a small hole drilled for the handbrake lever. 0.3 mm should be good as an exercise in precision and patience. 

And then I somehow managed to flip it away. After ten minutes of desperately looking on the floor, I found it on my keyboard. Phew! 

Internal parts primed and sprayed gray (Tamiya XF-19 Sky Gray) 

Details picked out with Citadel acrylics, and then the entire cockpit assembly is sprayed with a thin layer of AK Intermediate Gauzy Shine Enhancer to protect the paintwork. 

Seats added and the whole cockpit area weathered with a pinwash of 502 Abteilung oils diluted with AK Odorless thinner to make it look a bit dirty and worn.  

Rear dashboard attached - note that it should not be squeezed inside the shroud but cemented to its front. BTW, now you can see why I extended the cockpit floor backwards: the rear seat would just dangle in midair otherwise. 

The cockpit assembly is inserted into the fuselage from underneath and cemented with the struts holding it in place. 

Not fully trusting the weak attachment points of the top of the struts, I cemented some styrene strips under the fuselage floor and to the fuselage sides to secure everything in place. 

The rear seat needed to be leaned back slightly for the correct position. The shiny metal edges of the rear instrument panel will be painted of course. 

The landing gear wells are supplied as separate inserts to be cemented in between the top and bottom wing halves. The wheel well detailing is pretty nice for this scale. 

Dry fitting shows that the inserts are much too thick and would not allow the wing halves to close. That needs to be remedied of course. 

Sanding them down to an inch of their life is the solution here - the bottom of the wheel wells inserts is sanded so thin that they become nearly transparent. 

The underside of the fuselage where the inserts will go will also need to be filed down to not interfere with the inserts. 

Bottom wing half cemented to the fuselage. Not exactly Eduard kind of fit, so putty and sanding will definitely be required to fill the gaps. 

Wing top halves cemented to the bottom. A few gaps around the edges need to be filled with liquid styrene, but the fit to the fuselage is almost perfect. 

The tiny air scoop on the left wing comes as a separate piece and it takes some shaping/filling to be seamlessly faired in with the wing profile. 

The stabilizers are supposed to have lugs that go into openings on the fuselage, but the lugs are just shapeless bumps, so they are not really usable. 

I could have added reinforcement strips, but I simply cut off the lugs and instead butt-joined the stabilizers. They are so small that liquid styrene cement should be strong enough. 

There, starting to look Yak-ish! 

Exhaust pipes cut from 1 mm brass tubes to replace the plastic "rods" provided in the kit. 

Superglued in the pre-drilled holes, taking care not to drop them inside. 

Engine exhaust covers added - I used the kit's plastic parts instead of the photo-etched ones, as they looked just as good and were far easier to handle. See why it didn't matter that I cut open the cooling vents on the inside? 

The coaming under the windshield is painted Sky Gray and some semi-circular hand holds added. One last look at the nicely detailed cockpit ... 

... before it disappears forever beneath a thick but actually pretty clear, one-piece canopy. I used a careful application of Tamiya Extra Thin cement to attach it, with no fogging or any noticeable side effect. Not dissatisfied at all, to be honest, the fit is absolutely excellent. 

Landing gears assembled. Again, no instructions are given, so own photo references are mandatory. The scissor links are from the PE set, but the plastic parts are quite adequate even without any improvements. It's all pretty fragile though, so no rough handling! Wheels and PE gear bay doors will be added after painting. 

Canopy masked off with the Montex mini masks. The masks didn't want to sit snugly around corners, but some burnishing with cocktail sticks persuaded them to stay put at least until the primer is in place. 

The model is rubbed off with IPA alcohol to remove remaining grease, dust and fingerprints before priming. 

Firing up the spray booth and the compressor. UMP Ultimate Primer, H&S Evolution airbrush, 35 PSI. 

Looks like a rendered image, but it is really this monochrome. BTW, before priming, I flatted the wheels slightly and also cut out the position for the wing landing lights to be installed later. 

I struggled to mix up the duck eggshell blue for the undersides, but found the perfect combo: Tamiya XF-2 Flat White (10ml) + 15 drops of X-23 Clear Blue + 6 drops of X-25 Clear Green. A crazy mix, but it really worked out just the way it looks on the reference photos. 

Undersides sprayed with this weird blue-green color, using my H&S Infinity airbrush. Now wait a day for the paint to fully cure before painting the upper side color. 

Underside being masked off. Mostly straight lines, so a fairly easy job. 

Top side painted with a mixture of Tamiya XF-19 Sky Grey (60%) + XF-24 Light Blue (40%), thinned 50-50 with Mr Color Leveling Thinner, applied in very thin coats with the H&S Infinity. I made the coat slightly thinner along the panel lines to let the darker primer shine through, giving an impression of faded paint.  

Propeller painted and installed. The spinner sprayed with Tamiya X-2 Gloss White, and the engine cooling louvres were hand painted with Vallejo Steel (imho the best range of metal paints for brush painting).  

The model is coated with a layer of AKI Gauzy Shine Enhancer gloss coat applied with a broad paintbrush and then polished with a micromesh cloth to prepare for the decals and to protect the paintwork. 

My favorite part, decalling in progress. The decals are super nicely printed and conform beautifully to the surface. However, for some reason only six national insignias are provided instead of the needed eight, so it's a good thing that I have some spare ones left. 

Some mild weathering applied, using mainly Tamiya Weathering Master pastels, some washes with 502 Abteiulung oils (Bitume) for exhaust stains and just a tiny amount of Tamiya Panel Line Accent Color washes (black mixed with gray). 

Let's call it finished. Petite and cute. 

Hungarian Jak-11 under a gray November sky. 

Jak-11 under a gray November sky. 

Jak-11 under a gray November sky. Antenna wire is Ammo Mig Jimenez rigging (Super Fine 0.01 mm). 

Jak-11 under a gray November sky. 

Jak-11 under a gray November sky. 

Jak-11 under a gray November sky. 

Jak-11 under a gray November sky. 

Jak-11 under a gray November sky. 

Jak-11 under a gray November sky. 

Snow and ice. 

Snow and ice. 

In the hangar. 

In the hangar. 

Ready for an evening flight above Szolnok.