1:48 Jak-1

The first Yakovlev in the line

The Yak-1 entered service still before the German attack and became the starting point of a whole numerous family. Its fuselage was of mixed construction, steel tubes supplemented by wood and fabric, and above the cockpit a tall decking remained with a framed canopy sliding to the rear. It is precisely the framing that is the recognition feature of the early form: where the later version has a smooth bubble, the first Yak carries a dense grid of bars. A model without carefully painted frames therefore looks indeterminate and the age of the machine cannot be told from it.

What the box masks

Inside are masks for the cockpit glazing for the outer and the inner face and one mask for the national insignia. Given the number of bars on the early canopy, that is a part of the work which the hand tape method manages only at a great cost in time. The film also holds on curved glass better than stiff tape, which tends to lift in a curve precisely at the corners of the windows.

Spray across the edge, not along it

The direction in which you lay the paint onto a masked area decides more than the thinning does. When the nozzle is run along the edge of a mask, the air pressure drives the mist into the gap and the paint gets under the film. When, on the other hand, you spray perpendicularly from above onto the edge and in short passes, the stream does not push paint into the gap and the edge comes out clean. It also helps to lower the pressure by about a third against an ordinary pass and to hold the nozzle further away. A slower approach repays itself in that the edge does not have to be repaired. The time saved is far from the only gain: every repair of a frame with a brush leaves a different texture from sprayed paint, and on the small area of a cockpit that difference is clearly apparent even under the final clear coat.