Hi, just joined the forum yesterday, and I have a backlog of builds from my first 15 months in this great new hobby I’ve been enjoying so much. I don’t do many military planes at all, but not so long ago I ended up building multiple examples of two different Russian WWII planes, the Yak 3 fighter and the Yak 6 light bomber/transporter.
The reason for building more than one is that all the model kits were given to me by a friend. He doesn’t build models (but he does collect diecast). He came across a bunch of model plane kits a Russian trade group didn’t want - they were literally going to throw them in the rubbish - so he grabbed as many as he could, and has given them to model builders he knows. Here’s the first ones I built, the Yak 3s (three of them!).
The box he gave me contained 5 Yak 3 kits! They were incredibly crude, simple and rough, but it gave me the chance to have my first practice goes at using putty filler etc, so I learned a lot from trying to bring these horrible kits up to presentable condition. They’re all in 1/48 scale, by the way.
I gave two of the Yak 3s to my friend and kept one for myself.
Now for the other plane, the little-known Yak 6. These two models are in 1/72 scale.
The Yak 6 is a relatively unknown thing. Even some of my plane-fanatic friends hadn’t heard of it. It flew during 1943-44, did a lot of very good work supporting the partisans, and the Russians built 1000 of them. They were called a ‘light bomber’ and had a 500kg payload, but more often than not they were just a transporter. The co-pilot is the unlucky guy whose job it was to pop the hatch and operate the machine gun. Must have been a fun job on a cold day in Russia!
As with the Yak 3s, I built two Yak 6s, so I have one and I’ve given one to my mate who gave me the freebie kit.