The brakes consist of a single handle, which resembles a bicycle brake mounted on the control stick. Since there is no nose wheel steering it is necessary to use differential braking for steering. In order to taxi straight, both rudder pedals are neutralized and a quick squeeze of the brake handle will keep the nose in line. In order to turn, just add rudder in the desired direction and squeeze a touch of brake. It's really pretty simple but different from what most of us here in the USA are used to. I have changed some of the instruments from Russian to American as the original airspeed was in kilometers, the altimeter in meters and millibars and the manifold pressure in millimeters. On my first couple of flights I used the Russian instruments, but I feel more comfortable using knots, feet and inches of mercury. I am using the Russian tachometer (which reads percentage of RPM instead of showing the actual revolutions) and the stock Russian radio, which works great. Some of the compass markings look a little strange, and the artificial horizon shows the sky on the bottom instead of the top like the American instrument.

All the various printing in the cockpit is in Russian lettering which is pretty but unintelligible to me. I have installed decals in English to translate for me.

The Yak is fully aerobatic, stressed to 7 g's positive and 5 g's negative, with an inverted fuel system allowing one to fly inverted for two minutes before running out of gas (which is supplied from a small reserve tank). The roll rate is fast and quite impressive if the stick is moved quickly to either side. Rolls to the right are even faster since the propeller rotates counter clockwise.

The powerplant is a 360 h.p. Ivchenko M-14P, nine cylinder single row radial. The aircraft is light with an empty weight of only 2238 pounds. Wing span is short at 30.5 feet. (Nice to have the extra hangar space) and length is 25.4 feet.