1:48 Mig-3

Frames that took the view away

The MiG-3 came about as a high-altitude interceptor and at altitudes above seven kilometers it was among the fastest the Soviet Union had at the beginning of the war. Near the ground, however, it behaved unkindly and pilots reproached it for one more thing: there was almost nothing to be seen out. The cockpit sits deep in the fuselage, the canopy is formed by a narrow hood with dense bars and behind the headrest fixed glazing continues, whose panels are small and inclined at a sharp angle.

A dense grid and a precise cut

The number of frames makes varnishing the cockpit the most time-consuming part of building this type. The fields between the bars are tiny, many of them have the shape of an irregular quadrilateral and when cutting by hand it easily happens that one edge comes out a hair's breadth away from the neighboring field. On a finished model such asymmetry is immediately apparent, because the frames lie close beside one another. Pre-cut shapes remove this problem.

What the box offers

Inside lie film for the outer panes and a sheet with which the stars arise by spraying. Nothing is covered from the inside on these goods. The outline is cut to the parts of the ICM model; the aircraft itself you will not find in the box.

Recommendation

With such a dense grid it proves best to spray very thinly and rather in two goes. A thick coat lifts under the edge of the film and between narrow bars there is nowhere left to retreat. It also helps to press all the edges down with a blunt point before spraying and to let the model rest for a while, so that the film has time to cling over its whole area.