Yak-12 - Amodel

So, what's in this tiny box? 

Fret 1 - The main fuselage parts. 

Fret 2 - The wings. The fabric effect looks quite nice and realistic. 

The side doors and that triangular cargo door should be easy to open up if one is inclined to display the cockpit fully open (and why not indeed). 

Fret 3 - Pretty much everything else. 

Obvious signs of a low pressure molding process, with the expected softness, clumsy mold gates and sink marks here and there. But it's not too bad at all - not the usual Amodel collection of plastic blobs. 

The molds seem to be originating from some (to me unknown) Ukranian manufacturer. Master 44? 

The transparent fret. 

Some distortion is present but it looks worse in this photo than in real life. 

All the side and roof windows are to be cemented inside the fuselage openings without any edge framing whatsoever - I have never seen anything like this on a model kit before. It will be very challenging to get a decent bond without getting any cement on the window panes. Also all the mold gates end up on the glass pane itself, so every glass surface needs to be sanded smooth and then repolished back to transparency 

Two versions can be built from the decals: a standard Soviet military version and a Polish civilian ambulance aircraft. The printing of the decal sheet looks okay, but my experience with Amodel decals is not the best, so I would try to avoid them. Also, I would definitely not be tempted to use that blue stripe decal, as you would still need to paint the rest of the blue areas (the nose and the fin) and finding the exactly matching blue color may be quite difficult. 

A slight print misalignment can be seen if you look carefully, but not too bad. 

The usual Amodel leaflet instruction sheet - I think I can manage even without it. Color callouts for the Humbrol range is provided. 

I also purchased a PE sheet while I was at it. A lot of interesting stuff can be added if one is not afraid of some plastic surgery. 

Let's start with the cockpit floors! The rather basic details, including the rear seat bench, are all carefully sanded off, to be replaced with more accurate PE details.  

The new floor is in place, minus the seats and pedals. The foldable rear seats will be in the folded position to allow room for some generous cargo space. I might add some stuff in there, I am not yet sure what. 

There is little point in detailing the cockpit if it cannot be seen, so the doors and the cargo bay door were cut open using a new modeling knife blade, to be replaced with the PE doors later. Be warned, the plastic is quite brittle and breaks easily, so it is important to work slowly and carefully. 

I didn't expect the cockpit floor to fit perfectly without a lot of sanding and fettling, and I wasn't wrong. It can be done, it just takes some work and a lot of subsequent dry-fitting. 

The two seats are pretty crude, but have the right basic shape and can be improved with the help of the PE set. There are however some deep sink marks in the middle of each seat that needs to be filled with some putty. 

The king’s throne. The seat framing is improved by using some heat-stretched sprue bent into shape, and the PE parts. It should all look less ”golden” once painted accordingly. There are some tiny holes in the floor for the seat legs, I needed to widen them a bit by drilling into them so the seat legs have something to hold on to. 

Cockpit floor superglued to the left fuselage half and primed gray. Seats and dashboard still missing as you can see. 

Some additional detail added to the cargo area using pieces of styrene and lead wire - basically just the missing rear bulkhead and a small shelf containing battery, power converter and radio equipment. All primed gray with Badger Stynylrez primer, waiting for the detail paintjob. 

The side windows have their molding gates protruding onto the glass pane. This needs to be removed, so the glass itself needs to be sanded and then polished back to transparency and shine. A bit annoying, but no big deal. 

Several sanding and polishing sessions later, the offending gate is gone and the transparency is restored. I used mainly Mr Hobby polishing cloths and then finished off with Tamiya Polishing Compounds (Fine and Finish). 

Side windows installed, by painstakingly sanding the edges of the transparent part to fit precisely into the aperture and then letting microscopic amounts of Tamiya Extra Thin Cement flow into the join between the window and the fuselage while trying to avoid fogging of the glass. Acrylic cement would have been better but it proved too weak to hold the windows in place. This is definitely not a great design as it is really easy to accidentally push in the windows into the cockpit during handling. 

The seats were hand painted using Tamiya acrylics and superglued onto the floor. The slightly oversized seat belts are from the Parts photo etched set. The contact points between the legs of the seats and the floor are literally microscopic, so the seats are dislodged by the slightest touch. If I would build this model again, I would use the kit's own seat frames instead of the flimsy PE frames - they would have been far more sturdy and wouldn't look too bad either. 

Cockpit floor weathered with various brown pastels before the fuselage halves are joined using a mix of Revell Contacta cement and Tamiya Extra Thin cement. The fuselage parts are slightly warped, so I can see a few upcoming sessions with filling and sanding, but nothing out of the ordinary with an Amodel kit. I deliberately left out the two roof windows - I figured that they are easier to insert with the fuselage assembled.  

Quite a lot of putty needs to be applied for an invisible centerline seam, and more will follow. Good thing that this model is so small that it goes quite fast! 

Wing top and bottom halves joined. The join lines are a bit rugged so some filling and sanding is required, but the fabric detail is excellent. 

Wing assembly added to the fuselage.  

Unfortunately, the wing assembly creates an ugly jagged seam on the inside of the cockpit ceiling, very visible through the open windows. To remedy this I padded the cockpit ceiling with a thin piece of styrene cut in shape and painted accordingly. It is an easy job, but since the seats are in the way, they first needed to be removed. Again. 

New inner ceiling liner in place - much better! I also added the flaps and ailerons actuator rods from aluminium tubes and some internal bracing from stretched sprue, but I didn't feel like overdoing it. 

The left and right stabilizers are molded as one piece to be cemented onto the fuselage, and the vertical fin is then added on top of it. Be warned, if you cement on the fin first, you will not be able to add the stabilizers later! There is a gap between the stabilizers and the fin, which while not being too far from how the real aircraft looks, is much too big on the model and is therefore soon filled with dissolved Tamiya White Putty. 

The typical Yakovlev hinged cooling louvers (that allow the pilot to control the air flow to cool the engine) are presented as molded detail. While it is all acceptably looking in this small scale, the photo etched set provides a slightly better option to represent the shutter flaps. 

The molded ring of shutter flaps is removed using a new modeling knife blade, followed up by sanding with a semi-circular file until the PE ring can fit in perfectly. Cemented in place using cyano acrylate. Ideally the individual shutter flaps should be twisted slightly to represent open or closed mode, but I am afraid to damage the blades, so I just decided to leave them as they are. The ring of shutter flaps should actually be a bit closer to the front, but the superglue got its death-grip on it before I had a chance to wiggle it in place, so now it is permanently stuck where it is. Mea culpa. 

Engine cowling assembled. The parts fit together rather poorly so some filling and sanding is required for everything to sit flush, but it is a lovely subassembly that works much better than having the cowling being molded onto the front of the fuselage halves.  

A bulkhead was created of scrap styrene painted black to prevent see through. On the real aircraft, there is an Ivchenko AI-14R air cooled radial piston engine with 9 cylinders in there, providing 256 horse power. 

The wing struts were added without problems. The larger main struts are the kit's own parts, but the smaller ones are made of heat-stretched sprue as the kit parts simply had too much flash on them to be usable. 

Engine cowling cemented onto the fuselage. The fit turned out to be a bit wonky so some putty was used to create a smooth surface on the top of the cowling. I also fabricated a sun visor of a piece of transparent green acetate to give the model a bit of interest. 

I purchased precut masks from KV Models, but they didn't fit at all, so instead I masked the windows with Tamiya masking tape. The large door openings were blocked off using sponge packing material - I hope that it will be sufficient to avoid the paint to find its way inside the cockpit!  

Model primed with Badger Stynylrez primer, using the H&S Infinity 0.4 mm needle at 25 psi. The primer revealed a few bad fillings around the engine cowling, so I needed to sand and fill these areas and then reprime them again. When dry, the primer coat is slightly polished with Mr Color polishing cloths to provide as smooth a surface for the final paint coat as possible.  

Top surfaces sprayed with Tamiya XF-89 Dark Green, which seems like a reasonable equivalent of the old Soviet green color. After the main paintwork was done, I mixed in a small amount Tamiya XF-76 Gray Green into the XF-89 and sprayed in the middle of the panels and inside the wing spars with the 0.2 mm nozzle to break up the uniform color. Along the fuselage sides around the driver's office, a filter of diluted blue was finally applied to further add some variation. 

Top sides masked off. 

Bottom side sprayed with my own mix of light duck egg shell blue - basically just Tamiya XF-2 white with 15 drops of X-23 Clear Blue and one drop of X-25 Clear Green. 

Masking tape removed - a few overspray errors here and there, but these should be easy to fix. It's starting to look like a Yak! 

Model gloss coated with Alclad II Aqua Gloss to seal the paintwork and prepare for a bit of weathering and the few decals to be used. I used a regular paintbrush for this - for me it gives the best result.