1:48 Mikoyan MiG-3 main wheels with weighted tyres, hard surface road type tyre tread

Flattened wheels for a high-altitude fighter

High above the ground the MiG-3 was in its element. An engine with a supercharger tuned for great heights gave it a speed that in 1941 only a handful of machines could match, but the fighting on the Eastern Front took place near the ground, where the fighter lost both agility and performance. Even so it did its job: it defended the sky over Moscow, flew reconnaissance, and its production ended mainly because the engine was needed for ground-attack aircraft.

Wheels injected into a mold tend to have a perfectly round outline, which a standing aircraft in reality does not have. This pair is cast with flattening at the point of contact, so the model stops looking as though it were floating a millimeter above the surface. The tread pattern matches tires for hard surfaces, that is, for airfields with a concrete or rolled runway.

The package covers the pair of main landing gear wheels. The tail wheel stays from the kit, which is why the set covers less than the other wheel items of this brand for 1:48 aircraft.

Replacing them takes a few minutes and it is one of the few pieces of work on a model that even a layman notices: a tire with a face resting on the ground immediately gives the machine weight. It is enough to cut off the original wheel, check the angle of the axle and glue the new part on with super glue. Before painting it helps to mask the hub from the rubber so that the transition stays sharp; it pays off even on such a small part, because it is precisely the landing gear that a viewer has closest to the eye when looking at a model in a display case.

Nothing else on the model has to be changed.