I finally finished the Yak-16. I sanded the spine down a bit to get closer to the original artwork, then I moved on to the canopy.
A good 80% - 90% of the time spent on this model was spent working on the $#!+ canopy. I decided to make a smash mold copy of the Mig-23 canopy (it seemed liked a good idea at the time) and managed to make about 5 good copies. I placed the best one on the plane, but a combination of minor errors and annoyances meant that I spent hours correcting gaps and deformities. I saw that one side of the canopy bowed out by about 1mm, and the clear plastic just laughed at the CA I poured to try to fix it, so I ended up reheating the canopy
while it was still glued to the plane and squishing the bad spot down with my bare fingers. Surprisingly, it worked. I masked the canopy frames with a liquid mask and finished the rest of the reconstruction. The next disaster was when I removed the mask and saw that some paint had seeped under it. I scraped off as much as I could, but it still looks bad. The rest of the painting and decaling went surprisingly well. I didn't add any extra guns or detail the existing ones.
I took these pictures this morning, hence the bluish cast:
Thanks for looking and for all the comments, and to Stephane for posting the original artwork.
Frank
