Ayacucho Maquetas Yakovlev AIR-7 In-Box review

From the archives (2009):
(the completed model is here:)
http://wingsofintent.blogspot.com/2014/07/ayacucho-maquetas-yakovlev-air-7.html

In-Box Review

Ayacucho Maquetas 1/72 Yakovlev Air-7

When I held in my hands the resin kit of the Yakovlev Air-7 I couldn’t believe my eyes.

The beauty of the chosen subject, the flawless and well executed parts, the degree of detail, all were superlative.

The maker of the kit, Matias Hagen from Argentina, is a very meticulous and talented craftsman and artist.

The images attached may give you an idea of the beauty of the parts, crisp and clean. Resin is a media that naturally allows for high levels of detail, and on the other hand requires a different approach than your usual injected styrene kit. A minimum and easy cleanup of the parts (in this kit), the use of a mask when you sand and carefully applied superglue is the way to go here.

The kit comes in a sturdy and handsome box that includes the resin parts, vacuformed transparencies and instructions. No decals are included since none are needed for this plane. The box art is catchy. The instructions are bilingual (Spanish and English) and include a history of the plane, several tips and guidelines in dealing with polyester resin kits, very clear and detailed drawings of the step-by-step construction sequence, a parts map, color guides, and the announce of the coming of a very welcome second kit in the near future.

As you can see in the images the parts are molded on a thin wafer. You have to remove them with some care and caution in the case of the smaller parts. You have parts here to make you very happy and achieve a truly well detailed rendition of the original. I had some resin kits, and this is one of the best.

The plane:

The Yakovlev Air-7 was a single shot venture created in 1932 that had a few mods done during its remarkable career. It conquered the Russian speed record with passenger at 332 kilometers per hour in 1933.

It was based on the technical advantages of the fighter technology of the time (Polikarpov I-5) and used the same engine, the M-22, a local interpretation of the Bristol Jupiter VII.

The canopy, air intake and wheel pants had some changes as said before during its lifetime.

This kits are not in production at this time, but you can check Matias' blog clicking on the tile at the right of this article in my list of preferred sites.