Trumpeter 1/350
Yak-141 Freestyle

Background

The Yak-141 Freestyle was the Yakovlev OKB (Design Bureau) follow-on to the limited performance Yak-38 Forger. Like the Yak-38, the Yak-141 was designed for vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) operations aboard the aircraft carrying cruisers of the Soviet Navy and ultimately be the multi-role fighter aboard the aircraft carrier that would ultimately be christened "Admiral Kuznetsov". With the fall of communism and the steady flow of weapons systems development funding, the Yak-141 became a victim of budget cuts. Before the program was put into mothballs, the Yak-141 did achieve a milestone not previously achieved before by a VTOL nor VSTOL aircraft - sustained supersonic level flight.

The Kit

If you are interested in depicting the recently released aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov with its theoretical compliment of 18 Yak-141 fighters on its deck, you're going to need a few of these sets as the Kuznetsov kit comes with only four Yak-141s. Each Yak-141 set comes with six parts trees, each part tree comprising one complete aircraft.

Molded in light gray, black and clear styrene, the kit uses an innovative molding technique where the basic airframe is molded in gray, the landing gear in black, and the canopy in clear. Even in this scale, the outer wing panels are positionable - down for flight configuration or up for deck parking. Very impressive!

Each set also comes with a decal sheet to provide generic markings for each of the six aircraft.

Conclusion

You could build an entire carrier airwing in 1/350 scale with variations in colors and markings in the same shelf space as one 1/32 Su-27 Flanker, and there is not a single IPMS judge with the eyesight to peer into your 1/350 cockpit. Whether you want to use these in an aircraft display or on the deck of your Kuznetsov, these nice little aircraft are quite a value given the color molding innovations that you will not find from any other manufacturer (to date) in 1/350th scale.

My sincere thanks to Stevens International for this review sample!