Brengun Yakovlev YAK-1 Build in 1/72 Scale Part I

This is the Brengun Yak-1, their kit number BRP72041. The moldings were first released in 2016, Brengun has issued a new boxing with different decals every year since. This is the “Aces” boxing and contains four marking options. I will be building a batch of Yaks, but as the kits are produced by several different manufacturers I will be posting the builds separately to better focus on the details of each kit.

The kit features fully-enclosed wheelwells and finely-molded surface detail. This boxing contains a photoetch fret and resin parts for the wheels and instrument panel. Right away one notices a rather peculiar engineering decision – the PE fret contains the underside panels which are meant to be inserted into recesses molded into the lower wing. The expected PE seatbelts are not provided.

Two additional sprues provide the fuselage sides and detail parts. Many of the parts are small, fragile, and have a bit of flash. The Carpet Monster will certainly be pleased!

I started with the wing construction as I wanted to make certain the PE panels fit properly into the lower wing. Straight away I ran into the first fit problem. The wing halves will not mate properly without some filing and sanding.

Here are the PE panels in place. I’ll have to see how these look under primer.

The cockpit assembly is very detailed, but again some strange engineering decisions rear their heads. For reasons unknown to me Brengun has chosen to provide the central frame under the seat as a separate part – in photoetch. The small mating surfaces resulted in a fragile assembly, eventually I binned the PE part and substituted plastic sheet, problem solved. Why this was not molded as a single piece is beyond me.

The cockpit is detailed and fits well into the fuselage. It is delicate though and requires careful handling, even without the PE structure under the seat. PE belts are from spares from the Valom YAK-7 kit.

Fit of the major parts is good. I was happy that the wing / fuselage joint went well, but I suspect that would be a problem without filing down the inner surfaces.