AModel Yak-17 - any good?

[puddingwrestler]

I've just impulsively ordered an AModel Yak-17 via eBay for the princely sum of ten of your earthling australian dollars. My experiences with AModel are limited to a Yak-28P which I used as a donor kit for a Gerry Anderson interceptor (total crap) and a GeeBee racer used as the basis of the Black Scarab Mk.III fighter (not bad, but I didn't use the kit cockpit as it was to complex). Now I know AModel can be a bit hit and miss, so I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with this particular model - I really love the very early Soviet jets with the belly mounted engines like this one. I have MPM's MiG-9 (I think that's the number - the MiG which looks a lot like a Yak-17 anyway) and will build it. In fact, I'd like to build both and display them together.

So... is this one of AModels more buildable kits or am I in for some serious swearing?

This goofy looking chappy here:


Oh, and if people want to use this thread to whinge and vent thier spleen about AModel quality, that's fine by me!

[thedarkmaster]

to answer the threda  title.......NO, but if you work at it you can build it ok.

[chrisonord]

Just make sure you have a good selection of Hammers, bolster chisels, a bench grinder, plasma cutter, Jack Daniels, Wild Turkey, Jim Beam, Glenfiddich, poteen/moonshine,stella artois etc. cut no shave all your hair off so you can't rip it out, and cut all your finger nails down to the bone as you WILL chew them all off. oh and have the ambulance service on quick dial.
You should be ok then 
Chris. 

[Weaver]

I've only built one AModel (their MiG-9) and it was a PAIN. My advice is check the fit of EVERYTHING, even the most stupidly simple things, at least twice.

[frank2056]

It's better than the PM Yak-15... The A-Model kit is well detailed and better in many ways to their earlier kits, but you still have to dry fit a lot and pay extra attention to the wing-fuselage joint.

[puddingwrestler]

I have long hair (40cm or there abouts in a pony tail) and a full beard, so I should be okay for hair pulling.
I don't really drink, but I have various spirits in the house. This might drive me to drink I suppose.
My finger nails are grown long (very useful for holding parts in place when using super glue - I find super glue does not stick to finger nails very well. Also great for running the touch screen PDA our school uses for roll marking, and which ALWAYS loses it's stylus, but mostly because I forget to cut them) so should be okay there as well.
I will, however have to go out and buy a plasma cutter.
I'm glad to hear Frank thinks it's better than thier earlier kits - I used more putty to fill gaps in the Yak-28P's engines that to blend it's wings into an F-104's body...

[McGreig]

I'd go along with Frank, and suggest that it's definitely one of their buildable kits.

It's a little bit over-engineered - they use the same wing with alternate undercarriage bays for this kit with its tricycle gear and their Yak-15 tail dragger, and the thickness of the plastic and the finesse of the moulding isn't quite up to their ambitions for internal detail and separate flaps.

But it goes together OK with care and patience, looks a lot better than the PM kit, is neatly moulded with virtually no flash and is way ahead of their Yak-28 in terms of fit.

[puddingwrestler]

You reassure me immensly dear sir.

[bobbo]

I have their MiG 9 kit - about 1/3 done - and it's a bit of a Putty Hog, along with LOTS of sand, test fit, sand, etc.  And the engraving is a bit inconsistent . . . But it should turn out OK.  not contest grade, mind you, but OK.  And I am planning on the Yak-17 in the near future. 

bobbo

[Gary]

More importantly to my mind, is there a better Yak-17 on the market?

Like low run resin kits, some times, AModel is the only game in town for certain aircraft. I struggle and fiddle and swear and bin them, but that's due to my lack of ability and patience. But when you reflect on what's available from some of the supreme kit makers, well frankly, I am rather sick of Bf-109's and Fw-190's and P-friggen-51's. Rarely do you get an oddity from the supreme kit makers. It's a massive investment to engineer a set of molds that almost snap together like Tamiya kits do.

So it's a trade off and yet, the best thing of all is that here is no personal trade off, even if you bin the kit. Every time you touch plastic, your skills improve. When you challenge yourself to a kit like an AModel, the journey in discovery of a new technique is well worth the few bucks these kits cost. If you finish it and it looks good, then you have done yourself proud and your mates will acknowledge it.

I picked up a bunch of AModel kit's in a shop in the US for less than 5 bucks each. The owner of the shop complained bitterly that they were crap kits. I took the lot off his hands for an even bigger discount and gave them to my brother in law's Cub Scout Troop with exactly that message. When they hammered and glumped these things together we all talked about what they learned, and then we set them on a case of Hassagawa P-51's. The results were beer than expected because the challenges they faced with the P-51's were not anywhere as large.

[noxioux]

Gary makes a great point.

I picked up two of their Yak-25 kits, and they look awful.  But after doing some trimming and dry-fitting, they're definitely build-able.  And really, for some of these subjects there's just not many choices.

How else will you master putty-fu and scratchjitsu?

[redstar72]

An excellent Yak-17 built from AModel kit:
http://www.dishmodels.ru/gshow.htm?p=3659&lng=E

[Ed S]

I don't know abou the Yak-17 kit, but I have built some Amodel kits.  They do take some work to get them to look right.  The real trick is to take the time and effort to get the fit and alignment right.  Don't worry about the panel lines & other surface details.  They are so crude that you might as well plan on sanding them off and pencilling them on after you paint the model.  With some work, they can be made into presentable models. 

Here is a picture of the Mig 9 I built a couple years ago.





I just finished the Amodel Rutan Voyager this week.  You can see some photos at this thread.
http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,28158.0.html

I also have one of their Yak 28R Brewer kits I'm working on.  So like Chris said, get some heavy duty tools and something serious to drink and have fun.

Ed

[redstar72]

The quality of AModel kits can be different. The oldest ones were CRUDE (the Voyager was probably the crudest of all), but the more recent ones are much better. Of course they all are limited run, so they cannot be molded in Tamiya quality ; but compared with the production of such companies as HUMA or Mach 2, working in the same technology - Amodel kits (excepting the very earlier ones) are notably better.

The Yak-17 kit (#7224) isn't new - it is about 10 years old, but it also doesn't belong to these "early AModel" kits and was regarded as very good when it appeared firstly. Anyway, it's much better than Voyager or early-molded MiG-9. Probably the same quality as Yak-28 series. It is molded from grey plastic. Panel lines aren't very thick, though some of them aren't smooth enough and have "non-uniform" depth and thickness. Of cource you'll need putty and sandpaper to build it, but the result can be very good.

Here is another article about building of this kit: http://www.ipmsstockholm.org/magazine/2005/12/stuff_eng_ciupek_yak17.htm.

Saying about AModel MiG-9 - there were two different models: the "old" (#7206) and the "new" (#7299). The "old" was typical "early" AModel: crude moldings from dirty white plastic; almost Matchbox-like panel lines, very deep and thick; poor detailing and almost unusable smaller parts. But the revised kit (#7299), which is produced now, is much better: it is molded from grey plastic, better detailed, and panel lines are much thinner and more accurate. Also it is corrected: the old kit had about 3 mm too short fuselage, which is fixed in the new one and it is now correct.

And I'm sorry: Ed S, are you sure that your MiG-9 is from AModel kit? Wasn't it a Skarabei kit? Both AModel kits are pure MiG-9, but your model looks rather like MiG-9M, or even like a cross between MiG-9 and 9M. The cannons are mounted like in the MiG-9, but the canopy is surely from MiG-9M. I think it could be built rather from Skarabei kit, which allows to build optionally a MiG-9, 9M, or two-seat 9UTI.  

[NARSES2]

Have to admit I agree with Redstar about the recent A Model kits. They need a little work but can be very nice. The Fury and the Hector are nice kits