Yaks Yak 39 what if?

[yak face]

Heres my entry for the Bonus SIG.The Yak 39 jet trainer. The idea is this- Imagine its 1973 and the Soviets are due to replace their ageing Aero L29 Delfin trainers.It just so happens Hawker (later Bae) are developing a new two seat advanced jet trainer , the 3rd prototype of which , crashes (thankfully without loss of life ) in the sea off the north coast of norway during testing .Thought to be irrecoverable , the aircraft is thought to be lost , but a soviet sub locates the wreckage and a covert recovery is made by the russians . The end result was the partial aircraft being reverse engineered by Yakovlev in a similar fashion to the post war unlicenced copy of the B29 - the tupolev tu4. The surprise at Bae when the Yak 39 was first seen on reconnaisance photographs must have been priceless, the soviet aircraft entering service in 1975, a year before the Bae hawk entered RAF service. Anyways heres the starter shots , an old aifrix kit ive had since i was a kid. It got started but never really got going , so perfect for this What if? Its going to be slightly altered ,a different shaped tail and nose and loaded with soviet weapons and a nice camo scheme , cheers tony

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[Ian M]

Cool idea! Look forward to you giving this British icon the Igor treatment.

Ian M

[Centurion3RTR]

Going to enjoy watching this Tony, love the background story too.

Have fun, John

[Guest]

welcome on board "comrade guvnor"

Look forward to see what you do with this

[Guest]

Nice story and very elaborated project!!

Looking forward to seeing this one!

Cheers. Polux

[mossiepilot]

What a good idea. Can't wait to see this sovietised.

Tony.

[Guest]

cool. looking forward to seeing this

[papa 695]

Should be a fun watch and a good idea

[Guest]

Nice idea mate. Should be good.

[yak face]

Havent been in the shed much lately but heres the progress so far. The cockpit has been painted in the light grey blue favoured by yakovlev and the seats have had the tops cut down a bit. The rest of the airframe is coming together nicely , the original tail being chopped off and replaced with a far more soviet looking one from the spares box (actually its a wingtip , chopped and shaped to get the yak style look). Not visible in the pics is the nose, which has had a long pitot put in the tip and will be getting a bit of filler to blend it in.heres the pics ,, tony

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[Guest]

Tony looking good!

[Guest]

This is looking good mate. Like the tail.

[Guest]

Looking very nice Tony!!

Polux

[yak face]

Hi all , in case you thought this one had disappeared ,heres an update. Ive not been in the shed much this last few weeks so progress is slow but ive got the airframe assembled and canopy on. The nose has been altered with a pitot at the end instead of the landing light , the characteristic vanes on this will be added later .Ive also added a RWR and countermeasures boom at the tail , again with knocky off bits to be added later on! I decided to give the canopy a slightly different look ,so added framework from aluminium tape to give the appearance of two separate hinged canopies, one for each pilot. Lets suppose the Soviets didnt have the expertise to mould such a large one piece plexiglass canopy in the early 70's. Primer is going on today and then ive got to decide what type of camo . cheers tony

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[yak face]

Latest progress on the YAK . Primer on and the yellow areas sprayed ready for masking off . The scheme is going to be the 70's/80's soviet weapons trainer type ie. light blue undersides with buff and green camo upper as per the Aero L39 Albatros. cheers tony

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